Bondi Spars With Lawmakers of Both Parties Over Epstein Files at Hearing

Attorney General Pam Bondi faced hours of questions Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, where the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files dominated an oversight hearing, according to Al Jazeera and CBS News. Epstein survivors attended, and the exchanges grew heated.

In opening remarks, Bondi said she was “deeply sorry for what any victim, any victim, has been through, especially as a result of that monster,” referring to Epstein, according to CBS News, TIME and Al Jazeera. But when Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, asked survivors in the room who had not been able to meet with the department to raise their hands, and every one did, and then asked Bondi to turn and apologize to them, Bondi declined. She said she would not “get in the gutter” over Jayapal’s “theatrics,” TIME, CBS News and CNBC reported.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed in November with bipartisan support, requires the department to publish its Epstein records and allows limited redactions to protect victims, Al Jazeera and PBS NewsHour reported. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the committee’s ranking Democrat, told Bondi, “You’re running a massive Epstein cover-up right out of the Department of Justice,” according to France 24 and CBS News. He said the department had been ordered to turn over six million documents but had provided about three million, and that Bondi has said the rest are duplicates; Raskin disputed that, according to Al Jazeera and CBS News.

The sharpest Republican challenge came from Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who co-sponsored the law. Massie said the department’s release of victims’ personal information was “literally the worst thing you could do to survivors,” according to CBS News and France 24, and he accused it of a “massive failure” to comply with the law, Al Jazeera and CNBC reported. He pressed Bondi on why billionaire Leslie Wexner’s name had been redacted in an FBI document. Bondi said the department unredacted it within 40 minutes of Massie raising the issue. “Forty minutes of me catching you red-handed,” Massie replied, CNBC and Al Jazeera reported. Bondi called Massie a hypocrite with “Trump derangement syndrome,” and she said Massie focused on the files because the president is mentioned in them, according to France 24, CBS News and CNBC.

Democrats also pressed Bondi on prosecutions of the president’s critics. Raskin cited cases against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to CBS News and Al Jazeera. CBS News and PBS NewsHour reported that a judge threw out both cases and that the department is seeking to revive them.

The White House says the department’s review of the files was thorough and complete, PBS NewsHour reported. Critics, including a bipartisan group of lawmakers, say the department has not complied with the Transparency Act and point to redaction mistakes and omissions in what it has released.