WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats accused Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday of orchestrating a “cover-up” of the Jeffrey Epstein files and turning the Department of Justice into an “instrument of revenge” for President Donald Trump, sparking a raucous House Judiciary Committee hearing attended by several Epstein victims.
Bondi defended the Justice Department’s handling of the court-ordered release, saying teams of government lawyers undertook a massive review under tight deadlines and that “pending investigations” in the Epstein matter limited what she could say. She did not elaborate on those probes.
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“You’re running a massive Epstein cover-up right out of the Department of Justice,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the panel’s top Democrat. He said Congress had subpoenaed six million documents, photographs and videos tied to Epstein but that the department had produced only three million.
Bondi, a close Trump ally, rejected the accusation, saying hundreds of DOJ attorneys spent “thousands of hours” combing through millions of pages to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed in November. The law requires the department to release all Epstein-related records within 30 days while redacting names and identifying details of victims — more than 1,000, according to the FBI — but bars shielding associates “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”
Raskin countered that names of Epstein’s “abusers, enablers, accomplices and co-conspirators” had been improperly blacked out “apparently to spare them embarrassment and disgrace,” while “many of the victims’ names” were left visible. Bondi said the department would correct any errors flagged by Congress or victims’ representatives.
“If any man’s name was redacted that should not have been, we will, of course, unredact it,” she said. “If a victim’s name was unredacted please bring it to us and we will redact it. We were given 30 days to review and redact and unredact millions of pages of documents. Our error rate is very low.”
The hearing quickly turned personal. Bondi repeatedly declined to answer several Democrats’ yes-or-no questions and bristled at calls to apologize directly to victims in the room, though she said she was sorry for their suffering. Among those attending were Sky Roberts, the brother of Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein accuser, and his wife, Amanda Roberts. At one point, a large image of Trump and Epstein loomed behind Bondi.
Democrats broadened their criticism to the department’s recent prosecutions involving Trump’s political adversaries, citing cases targeting former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. “You’ve turned the people’s Department of Justice into Trump’s instrument of revenge,” Raskin said. “Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza and you deliver every time he tells you to.”
Bondi’s deputy, Todd Blanche, recently said no further prosecutions related to Epstein were expected. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, remains the lone figure behind bars in the case. She was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking underage girls and is serving a 20-year sentence.
Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing regarding Epstein, but he resisted for months the wholesale release of the files before a rebellion among Republicans forced him to sign the transparency law, lawmakers said. The push reflected growing public pressure to dispel what many Americans — including some of Trump’s supporters — suspect is an entrenched effort to shield powerful men who socialized or did business with Epstein.
Trump’s denials of knowledge about Epstein’s crimes have drawn fresh scrutiny as newly released records circulate. According to a 2019 FBI interview included in the files, then–Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter told agents that Trump called him in 2006, as charges against Epstein became public, to say: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
The Justice Department has not provided a timeline for completing the Epstein records release or for concluding the investigations Bondi referenced. Lawmakers signaled they intend to compel further disclosures if needed.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
