Documents obtained by journalist and Newsmax host Greta Van Susteren reportedly show that the Obama administration had an opportunity to arrest convicted murderer Joran van der Sloot during a sting operation, only days before he committed a second murder.
The award-winning journalist intends to publish FBI documents she obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, as well as with the help of former Attorney General Pam Bondi, that show the FBI “bungled” the sting and then “kept it quiet” from the public.
Susteren also intends to release video footage of the sting itself.
She made the announcement on Facebook.
Released to her courtesy of President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, the new documents and video reportedly show that the Obama FBI “bungled” a sting operation by failing to arrest Van der Sloot in 2010 for the murder of Natalee Holloway.
Twenty days before Van der Sloot murdered Stephany Flores Ramírez on May 30, 2010, an intermediary working for the FBI paid van der Sloot an initial $25,000 out of $250,000 ($10,000 in cash, $15,000 wired) in exchange for information about Holloway’s remains, according to NPR. The information turned out to be false.
The Obama DOJ, then under the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder, subsequently waited until June 3, 2010 before charging Van der Sloot with extortion and wire fraud. By then, Ramírez was dead.
Critics have long maintained that the Obama FBI should have immediately arrested Van der Sloot when they had the chance.
It’s not yet clear what Susteren’s documents and video will show. She noted in her Facebook post that “some” of the FBI documents are “handwritten” and make mention of Holder “warning them not to screw it up.” Screw what up? Reportedly the “cover up.”
In a post published to the social media platform X, Susteren stressed that it’d taken her years to retrieve the documents.
It took YEARS to pry the evidence (FOIA etc) out of the FBI…I would have loved to have finished this project years ago https://t.co/BI7nkLezGD
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) July 26, 2026
Holloway was an 18-year-old Alabama high school graduate who went missing on May 30, 2005, while on a post-graduation trip in Aruba. She was last seen early that morning leaving a popular nightclub in the company of Van der Sloot, then 17, and two other young men, brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe.
Aruban authorities conducted an extensive investigation and detained Van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers based on the suspicion that they were involved in Holloway’s murder. However, they were released because investigators lacked enough evidence to bring formal charges.
In late 2007, Aruban prosecutors closed the close against the three without filing any cases. Holloway’s body has never been found. At her father’s request, an Alabama court issued a legal declaration of her death in early 2012, according to CNN.
Van der Sloot was eventually convicted of Ramírez’s murder in Peru in 2012 and sentenced to 28 years in Peruvian prison. In 2023, he received 18 additional years for trafficking drugs while incarcerated.
In 2023, he pleaded guilty in relation to the extortion and wire-fraud charges filed by the Obama administration years earlier. As part of the deal, he purported to tell the authorities what really happened with Holloway — that he’d bludgeoned her with a cinder block on an Aruba beach and disposed of her body in the ocean.
Susteren recently alleged that this admission from Van der Sloot was a lie:
This, among several other facts, shows Joran van der Sloot lied to the Federal Judge – no “huge cinder block” was ever found on the beach…and if this had happened this way (it did not), the cinder block would have been full of blood…that beach we searched right after Natalee… pic.twitter.com/eJtigkTFpm
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) July 26, 2026
Despite the admission, Van der Sloot was never charged in or convicted of Holloway’s murder.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Natalee Holloway Murderer’s Deadly Twist: Trump’s DOJ Releases Docs on FBI Decisions That May Have Cost a Life Under Eric Holder appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.