Attorney General Pam Bondi passed on multiple opportunities to address, acknowledge or apologize to survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse seated behind her over the course of a five-hour House Oversight Hearing on Wednesday.
Rather than engage with the women behind her, Bondi buried her eyes in her “burn book,” a binder filled with opposition research and canned insults toward mostly Democratic lawmakers asking her questions. She fixed her gaze toward the Congress members when the time came to attack.
In a Substack Live on Wednesday, reporter Vicky Ward and I discussed her performance in the context of the bungled release of the Epstein Files and its aftermath.
As noted by several Democratic lawmakers, Bondi’s Justice Department released the identities of dozens of victims protected by law under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, along with sensitive information including their driver’s licenses, phone numbers and nude photographs. Every time a Congress member brought up the subject, Bondi attacked the questioner, typically with a binder full of opposition research in front of her.
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) each acknowledged the survivors’ presence in the room, dressed mostly in white. Multiple times, lawmakers prompted survivors to raise their hands if they sought meetings with Bondi’s office and were denied that opportunity. Bondi made no eye contact with the women as their hands shot up in the air.
Even when bipartisan lawmakers, including Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), agreed that inaction on the Epstein investigation spanned decades through multiple presidential administrations, Bondi responded with insults. She called Massie a “failed politician” and Raskin a “washed-up, loser lawyer.” Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), a Jewish lawmaker whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, stormed out of the room after Bondi insinuated that she didn’t care enough about antisemitism. Even while dishing out deeply personal attack lines, Bondi accused her critics of “gutter” politics. She accepted no wrongdoing or missteps from her Justice Department, even for the privacy violations under her watch.
During our conversation, Vicky and I discussed whether Bondi’s pugilistic response to Epstein-related inquiries will backfire given the backlash from Trump’s supporters over his handling of the Epstein files. Our discussion lasted more than an hour, and Bondi’s performance served as a springboard to probe deeper into the Epstein saga, including highlights from the release of the files and what they say about journalistic threads that we have pulled for decades.
Watch the full interview at the top of this newsletter.
