Epstein Mystery Deepens: Bondi Battles FBI for Unreleased Evidence

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Newsbites

Chart of the week: Cars have gone grayscale over the past twenty years.

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AI robot attacks crowd in China: On February 9, an AI-powered robot pushed past security and lunged at humans in the crowd at the Spring Festival Gala before being pulled back. (video) The organizers of the event said it was a “simple robot failure.” It’s not the first time humans have had violent encounters with robots. In 2021, a Tesla engineer was also attacked by a robot in the factory during a malfunction.

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Near collision at Chicago airport: A Southwest Airlines plane narrowly avoided a collision with another plane on the runway of Chicago’s Midway airport on Tuesday (video). The Southwest flight was in the process of landing when a smaller private jet crossed its path on the runway. The pilots swiftly pulled up the plane and circled around to land a second time. While catastrophe was averted, the incident marks the latest in a series of aviation accidents that have raised significant scrutiny on the FAA and its ability to safely control air traffic.

More: The Trump Administration has terminated about 400 probationary employees at the FAA, less than 1% of its 45,000 total employees.

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DOGE: Federal employees received an email asking them to respond with approximately 5 bullet points of what they had accomplished in the past week. President Trump and Elon Musk said the request was a way to see who was actively working, claiming some employees never or rarely check their emails because they are either working another job, deceased, or are not real people. The email created some confusion, as it was unclear if employees would be fired if they didn’t respond. Some agencies, including the State Department and Pentagon, told staff not to respond until more clarity was given.

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Trump Gaza: An AI-generated music video was posted from President Trump’s Truth Social that showed an imaginary rebuilt “Trump Gaza”.

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$5M Visa Gold Card: President Trump said the U.S. plans to sell “gold card visas” that would fast-track a pathway to U.S. citizenship for the cost of $5M. “If we sell a million, that’s $5 trillion dollars,” Trump said. “I think we will sell a lot because I think there’s really a thirst.” The new plan would replace the 35-year-old EB-5 investor visa program, which gives U.S. visas in exchange for a $1M investment in a company that employs at least 10 people.

More: Numerous European and other countries already provide “golden visas” that grant residency or citizenship to wealthy individuals in exchange for substantial payments.

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Presidential Press Conferences: The presidential cabinet held its first meeting at the White House, which began with a period of questions from the press (video). The Prime Minister of the UK, Keir Starmer, visited with President Trump on Thursday. The two primarily discussed the Russia-Ukraine war and trade relationships between the U.S. and UK and EU (video).

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Rare earth minerals deal: President Zelensky will meet President Trump today (Friday) in Washington D.C. to discuss and potentially sign a deal to share Ukraine’s extremely valuable rare earth minerals with the U.S. The preliminary deal would create a “reconstruction investment fund” that would be managed by the U.S. and Ukrainian governments. The deal could potentially be a win-win to keep both countries happy with each other as they seek to end the war with Russia.

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Epstein Mystery Deepens: Bondi Battles FBI for Unreleased Evidence

Why it matters: Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender who exploited over 250 underage girls at his homes in New York and Florida, among other locations. His past influence and connection to prominent people including former U.S. presidents, celebrities, and political leaders around the world raise significant questions about who was involved in the conspiracy, something the files are supposed to shed light on. According to reports, he committed suicide while in maximum security prison in 2019.

What’s going on?
On Thursday night, Attorney General Pam Bondi released 200 pages of the Epstein files to the public, but said the full files are being withheld in opposition by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) FBI field office.

On the website, Bondi says the Department of Justice is committed to “transparency and lifting the veil on the disgusting actions of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators.”

The files hardly disclosed anything new that hasn’t already been leaked to the public over the past 5 years. The declassified documents show some of the flight logs of Epstein's plane, his rolodex of contacts, a list of evidence of several digital devices but no actual footage or content to see, and the list of victims, all of whose names are redacted. (more below)

DOJ claims FBI is withholding full documents
In a letter written to new FBI Director Kash Patel, AG Pam Bondi says,

“I repeatedly questioned whether this was the full set of documents responsive to my request and was repeatedly assured by the FBI that we had received the full set of documents. Late Yesterday; I learned from a source that the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein. Despite my repeated requests, the FBI never disclosed the existence of these files. 'When you and I spoke yesterday, you were just as surprised as I was to learn this new information.”

The letter continues,

“By 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, February 28; the FBI will deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office including all records, documents, audio and video recordings, and materials related to Jeffrey Epstein and his clients, regardless of how such information was obtained. There will be no withholdings or limitations to my or your access. The Department of Justice will ensure that any public disclosure of these files will be done in a manner to protect the privacy of victims and in accordance with law, as I have done my entire career as a prosecutor. I am also directing you to conduct an immediate investigation into why my order to the FBI was not followed. You will deliver to me a comprehensive report of your findings and proposed personnel action within 14 days.”

What was in “Phase I” of the documents?
Here are the official pdf documents for each specific item:

• Evidence list, of items and devices in investigation (pdf)

• Flight logs, who was with him on flights (pdfs)

• Contact book, names of the people in his contact list (pdf)

• Victim list, all of which are redacted (pdf)

Much of the information in the released documents remains redacted to protect the identities of the more than 200 victims, according to Bondi.

Rocky rollout of information sparks anger online
On Wednesday night, Pam Bondi announced on Fox News, “I think tomorrow, Jesse, breaking news right now, you’re going to see some Epstein information being released by my office.”

As anticipation grew, the result was by all accounts, underwhelming.

On Thursday, the Trump Administration released “Phase I” of the Epstein files to a group of right-wing social media influencers, who were photographed smiling and holding the binders outside the White House. Those included were Rogan O'Handley (known as DC Draino), Chaya Raichik (creator of Libs of TikTok), Mike Cernovich, and Liz Wheeler among others.

The process drew backlash online as the influencers posted photos of the binder but with no information about what was actually in them.

For hours, there was no information as to what was even in the binders.

One of the people who received Phase I posted on X saying, “A huge thank you to Attorney General @PamBondi and FBI Director @FBIDirectorKash for releasing Phase 1 of the Epstein Files today. They are true Patriots and historic Americans God bless them and their courage.”

At the time of that post and hours after, the public still did not know anything contained in the files.

In another instance, the official House Judiciary X account tweeted the following link. The link goes to a Rick Astley music video. This post has since been deleted but The News Memo captured a screenshot before.

What to watch moving forward
By 8:00 a.m. today (Feb 28), the FBI is supposed to turn over everything related to the Epstein case to the DOJ. If that does not happen, there is potentially a lot more going on here - a sort of internal civil war in the White House about whether the documents should be released at all.

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Billions in Overpayments: UnitedHealth Group Under Investigation for Medicare Billing Practices

In the latest sign that pressure is growing against America’s largest health insurers, the DOJ and the Senate Judiciary Committee are investigating UnitedHealth Group’s Medicare Advantage billing practices for potential malpractice and fraud.

• UnitedHealth Group (UHG) and other large insurers are suspected of having collected billions of additional dollars of tax-payer funded Medicare reimbursement payments for dubious medical conditions.

The investigations arose after the Wall Street Journal published multiple reports in 2024 that drew attention to the issue. The WSJ estimates that from 2019-2021 insurers collected an additional $50B of Medicare reimbursement payments for questionable medical diagnoses.

• In short, insurers are suspected of artificially inflating patient diagnoses without adequate medical justification in order to secure higher payments from the government.

• UHG has denied that its practices are abusive and has accused the WSJ of carrying out a “misinformation campaign” against the company. The WSJ has stood by its reporting.

How it works
At the heart of the investigation is a practice in the industry called in-home health risk assessments (HRAs). A feature of Medicare Advantage plans is that private insurers can send nurses and other medical staff to conduct in-home health assessments of patients, along with remote reviews of their medical charts. The nurses and other medical personnel conducting the HRAs are often employed by the health insurer itself, or contracted with a third-party.

Using the HRAs, at their own discretion the insurers can add diagnoses on top of conditions already diagnosed by a patient’s primary care physician. The intent of this feature was that insurers can help catch conditions missed by the primary care physician and therefore provide better treatment. However, insurers also have an incentive to add diagnoses because it results in higher reimbursement payments.

While traditional Medicare plans are administered by the federal government, Medicare Advantage plans are administered by private insurers, such as UHG, that contract with the government. The government reimburses insurers at a flat rate for each Medicare Advantage member, plus additional funds for other diagnosed conditions (known as risk-adjusted payments). In short, insurers get paid more for sicker members, creating an incentive to diagnose more conditions.

The WSJ, along with the Inspector General’s Office for the Department of Health and Human Services, found that insurers added thousands of diagnoses that appear either inaccurate or conditions for which enrollees did not receive any subsequent medical care. The WSJ also found that insurers added diagnoses for certain conditions at a much higher rate than traditional Medicare. For example, the chart below shows that just 43 of 10,000 traditional Medicare enrollees were diagnosed with diabetic cataracts (gray column), whereas 631 per 10,000 UHG enrollees were diagnosed (dark green column, the shaded portion represents the portion of diagnoses added by the insurer through health risk assessments).

Turbulent time for UHG, U.S. healthcare system
The investigation stands at the intersection of contentious issues, including concerns over waste, fraud, and high costs in the U.S. healthcare system, along with growing scrutiny and animosity against health insurers. UHG is dealing with the aftermath of the tragic murder of its health insurance CEO, Brian Thompson.