Congressional Democrats on Wednesday accused US Attorney General Pam Bondi of engaging in a “cover-up” of the Jeffrey Epstein files and turning the Department of Justice into what they described as an “instrument of revenge” for President Donald Trump.
Bondi, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, defended the DOJ’s handling of the release of the Epstein records, stating there are “pending investigations” in the case. She did not elaborate on those investigations during a combative hearing attended by several victims of Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for s3x trafficking underage girls.
Bondi’s deputy, Todd Blanche, has previously said no further prosecutions are expected in connection with Epstein, a wealthy financier with ties to prominent business leaders, politicians, celebrities and academics.
Committee ranking Democrat Jamie Raskin criticised the pace of the file release and the redactions made to the documents.
“You’re running a massive Epstein cover-up right out of the Department of Justice,” Raskin said. “You’ve been ordered by subpoena and by Congress to turn over six million documents, photographs and videos in the Epstein files, but you’ve turned over only three million.”
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed in November, required the DOJ to release all documents in its possession related to Epstein within 30 days, while mandating redaction of personally identifiable information about victims, who reportedly number more than 1,000.
The law states that powerful figures associated with Epstein could not be shielded “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”
Raskin argued that the names of Epstein’s “abusers, enablers, accomplices and co-conspirators” had nonetheless been redacted, “apparently to spare them embarrassment and disgrace.”
“Even worse, you shockingly failed to redact many of the victims’ names,” he added. Bondi responded that hundreds of attorneys spent thousands of hours reviewing millions of pages to comply with the law.
“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,” she said. “Our error rate is very low.”
During the hearing, Bondi repeatedly declined to directly answer certain questions from Democratic lawmakers. She refused a request to apologise directly to Epstein’s victims present in the room, though she expressed sorrow for their suffering.
Democrats also criticised prosecutions brought by the DOJ against Trump’s political opponents, including 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.”
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former associate, remains the only person imprisoned in connection with the case. She was convicted in 2021 of s3x trafficking underage girls and is serving a 20-year sentence.
Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, though scrutiny has intensified over past interactions between the two men. A 2019 FBI interview cited in the released files included remarks from Palm Beach’s then-police chief Michael Reiter, who said Trump called him in 2006, when s3x-related charges against Epstein became public, and stated: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”