During his remarks, Trump asked Bondi if she felt like answering the reporter's question. "I don't mind answering," the attorney general replied. When the president finished speaking, Bondi addressed the reporter and cited an interview she did with Fox News in February, which she said had "been getting a lot of attention."

At the center of the drama is the so-called "client list" — a purported document containing names of people, likely many of them powerful, to whom the late Palm Beach financier is said to have provided underage girls for sex. Moreover, the speculation is that Epstein used the list to extort and blackmail people.

President Donald Trump leaped to the defense of Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday in the face of mounting criticism from far-right influencers and conservative internet personalities over the Justice Department's abrupt refusal to release additional documents from the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking investigation.