Lawmakers grill Bondi over DOJ's Epstein files
By: Bart Jansen
Josh Meyers
and Aisha Bagchi
USA Today
WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats accused Attorney General Pam Bondi of overseeing a Justice Department cover-up of allegations in the latest tranche of Jeffery Epstein documents - and failing to protect his accusers - in a raucous February 11 [2026] House Judiciary Committee hearing.
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The hearing was marked by angry exchanges and outright yelling. One by one, democrats told Bondi she was forsaking potentially thousands of survivors to protect President Donald Trump, others in his administration and his powerful friends and allies.
.... "You acted with some mixture of staggering incompetence, cold indifference and jaded cruelty toward more than 1,000 victims raped, abused and trafficked," the panel's ranking Democrat, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said to Bondi in his opening statement. "This performance screams cover-up."
..... In response, Bondi attacked back. At times, she read form a notebook what appeared to be prepared insults, accusing particular Democrats of being soft on crime or having some tangential relationship with men mentioned in the Epstein files.
..... When Raskin tried to reclaim time for a colleague, Bondi restored: "You don't tell me anything, you washed-up loser lawyers," adding, "You're not even a lawyer."
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Raskin, a Harvard Law School graduate, taught constitutional law for 25 years.
..... Representative Jerry Nadler, D-New York, asked how many of Epstein's accomplices Bondi had indicted, which is none. Bondi responded by noting that the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 50,000, the S&P 500 neared 7,000 and the Nasdaq "is smashing records" under Trump. That, she said, should be lawmakers' focus.
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"You all should be apologizing," Bondi said. "You sit here and you attack the president. I'm not going to have it."
.... Congress approved a law directing the justice Department to release all of its Epstein documents by late December, [2025] redacting survivors; names. But some women's names were exposed among 3 million pages released so far. The department has withheld 2.5 million pages, which some lawmakers say contain the names of potential co-conspirators. Bondi invited women in her opening statement to report their allegations to the FBI.
..... Representative Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington, accused Bondi of failing Epstein survivors in attendance and asked her to turn to them and apologize.
..... Bondi started to respond by referring to former Attorney General Merick Garland, who served under president Joe Biden, but Jayapal interrupted and directed her to take responsibility for her own Justice Department.
..... "I'm not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics," Bondi responded.
..... Jayapal shot back that Bondi wasn't answering the question.
..... Bondi also defended the document releases, saying more than 500 lawyers and reviews spent thousands of hours painstakingly" reviewing millions of pages, doing "our very best in the time frame allotted by the legislation to protect victims."
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Republicans, led by Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio, repeatedly rushed to Bondi's defense, giving hr time to respond to accusation by Democrats.