On February 11, Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the House Judiciary Committee. It was a disgraceful performance. Bondi responded to legitimate constitutional issues raised by the members of the committee with a stream of irrelevant insults. Her childish reactions showed that she is utterly unfit for her position. Of course, the Democrats on the committee were unfriendly, but it was her duty to maintain her composure and respond in a dignified manner. She conspicuously failed to do so.
Let’s look first at her exchange with one of the best people in Congress, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who is a Republican, albeit one who has often clashed with Donald Trump. According to a story by Charlotte Hazard, “Attorney General Pam Bondi clashed with Kentucky GOP Congressman Thomas Massie on Wednesday when she called him a failed politician during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. During the hearing, Massie criticized Bondi’s leadership at the Department of Justice and said that the administration failed to comply fully with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Massie and California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna worked together in a bipartisan effort to get the files of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein released to the public. The DOJ has released millions of documents regarding Epstein and who he was in communications with, but some names are still redacted. Epstein was charged with sex trafficking minors in 2019, but died in prison before the trial. Massie asked Bondi why billionaire Les Wexner’s name was redacted when he was listed as a co-conspirator for child sex trafficking. After a small spat, Bondi responded and said, ‘We corrected that within 40 minutes, you’re acting like everybody’s trying to cover up Wexner’s name.’ Massie said he would be reclaiming his time and Bondi kept saying she wanted to answer the question. Bondi said within 40 minutes, Wexner’s name was added back. ‘Within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed,’ Massie snapped at her. ‘There was one redaction and we invited you in,” Bondi responded. ‘This guy has Trump Derangement Syndrome. You’re a failed politician.’ Bondi eventually brought up the fact that under former Attorney General Merrick Garland, no one brought up Epstein. ‘This goes over four administrations,’ Massie said. “You don’t have to go back to Biden. Let’s go back to Obama. Let’s go back to George Bush. This cover up spans decades and you are responsible for this portion of it.’
In an interview published in Politico, Massie elaborated on the situation involving Wexner. “Massie said Sunday serious questions remain about the DOJ’s handling of the files, including the decision not to prosecute billionaire Leslie Wexner, a former client of Epstein’s whose name appears several hundred times in the Epstein files. Wexner was one of six ‘wealthy, powerful men’ whose names were originally redacted in the Epstein files, Khanna and Massie revealed Tuesday, after reviewing unredacted copies of the files at the Justice Department. The DOJ later unredacted Wexner’s name on a 2019 FBI document listing several potential ‘co-conspirators’ of Epstein’s, including his convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for child sex trafficking charges. Wexner has maintained for years that he cut ties with the disgraced financier several decades ago when he realized that Epstein had illicitly taken money from him. ‘The Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was being viewed as a source of information about Epstein and was not a target in any respect,’ a legal representative for Wexner said in a recent statement. ‘Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.’
“Bondi sent a legally required report to Congress on Saturday in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated the DOJ supply lawmakers with a summary of all redactions made, including the legal basis for doing so, and a list of government officials named in the documents. In the letter, Bondi cited ‘deliberative-process privilege’ as one justification for redacting certain documents, a common-law principle that allows the federal government to withhold documents revealing internal decision-making. ‘The problem with that is the bill that Ro Khanna and I wrote says that they must release internal memos and notes and emails about their decisions on whether to prosecute or not prosecute, whether to investigate or not investigate,’ Massie said on ABC. ‘It’s important they follow that, because then we could find why they didn’t prosecute Leslie Wexner. What was the decision tree there?’ The release of unredacted prosecutorial and investigative documents could also shed light on the 2008 plea deal under which Epstein avoided severe federal charges and pleaded guilty to lesser state charges in Florida, Massie added.”
In an exchange with Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic Congresswoman from Washington, it was revealed that the Department of Justice had failed to redact the names of child victims of Epstein, even though this could expose them to serious embarrassment. Bondi wouldn’t apologize to the victims, some of whom were standing behind her. It also came out that Bondi had a folder detailing Jayapat’s searches through the Epstein files, even though such surveillance is illegal. In an interview with Steve Inskeep, Jayapat said: “INSKEEP: This description of Justice Department surveillance becomes all the more interesting when you see an image from yesterday’s congressional hearing. A Reuters photographer captured Attorney General Pam Bondi holding a document labeled, quote, ‘Jayapal Pramila search history’ – last name first there. The document had a list of what appeared to be individual Epstein file searches. She had it in hand while sidestepping questions from Representative Pramila Jayapal, who is our next guest.
“INSKEEP: What are your thoughts about that paper with your search history in the attorney general’s hand? JAYAPAL: Well, I think it’s completely against the separation of powers. We are supposed to be able to, as lawmakers, go in, review the files, take whatever we want from there, not be surveilled and spied on by the Department of Justice. And it’s – that was my search history. It was much more extensive than that, but that was the first page. And she clearly came in prepared with that information. In fact, I think she probably opened it up to us on Monday, two days before the hearing, so she could see what we were going to search and ask her about. Totally unacceptable. And we’ve asked for, immediately, a change in the process so that the DOJ is not spying on us. INSKEEP: House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about this. He said, I know nothing about it. Not going to comment on it. But if it happened, it’s inappropriate. Are you getting any support from Republicans on that? JAYAPAL: Yeah. I actually spoke to Mike last night about this, and I do think that there is bipartisan agreement that we should be able to review those files without the Department of Justice surveilling us. And that’s exactly what she was doing, and I think she was doing it in preparation for the hearing. But also, I think they want to know what we’re going to – what we’re pulling up so that they can use it in some way. That was in her Burn Book. That’s what we call that binder with all the opposition research against us that she kept trying to insult different members of Congress with. And I think that she – you know, I think there is bipartisan support to say this cannot continue to happen, and we need a whole new process for how we review these files and who tracks, you know, any of this. INSKEEP: Just so I understand – and he’ll speak for himself – but did you understand Speaker Johnson to be on board with taking some kind of action here? JAYAPAL: Well, I think I’ll just – I won’t say what he said to me, but I’ll just say what he said in the public quote. And I showed him and told him exactly what had happened and that the search was my search, and it clearly was surveilling. INSKEEP: Now, you raised in the hearing the failure to redact the names of victims and then the redaction of other people who are in the files, one of them a man named Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem. As far as I could tell, you didn’t get an answer about that particular case, but you brought it up in any case. What draws that particular redaction to your attention? JAYAPAL: Well, the point I was trying to make is that the Transparency Act that we passed in Congress specifically said you have to redact the private information of survivors and you have to not redact the private information, the personal information of any potential predators or co-conspirators. And that’s clearly what that email indicated, is that there was a powerful person who was being protected. He happened to – as I mentioned in my remarks, he happened to also be somebody with financial ties to Donald Trump and personal ties to Steve Bannon. And so I wanted to get her answer about why she was violating – allowing the violation of the law in both these instances, the nonredaction of that personal information of survivors and then the redaction of powerful people that she seemed to be protecting. She didn’t want to answer that question. The most important thing to me was getting her to turn around to the survivors and apologize to them because the harm is irreparable. That information is out there now. Nude photographs are out there. Even if the Department of Justice redacts that, that does not bring justice to the survivors. And, you know, it was just stunning to me that she refused to turn to them and take responsibility for what her Department of Justice had done to re-traumatize these survivors. INSKEEP: In the absence of an answer from the Justice Department, I want to understand what you suppose happened here, what you suspect or surmise happened here. Are you saying that you think Justice Department lawyers or somebody else went through the Epstein files looking for names that might be sensitive for the president and tried to redact them? JAYAPAL: Yes. I am absolutely saying that because it – there were too many instances where you saw that happen. It was a pattern of redactions. And on the other side, it was a pattern of not redacting victims’ names that I think was meant to intimidate survivors who did try to come forward, because there was a list of 32 survivors. You could have said that that was a mistake – that everything was not redacted – except that there was one name on that list that was redacted. And the title of the email was Epstein Survivors – Victims List. Epstein Victims List. INSKEEP: So somebody clearly got a look at that. It’s not like they didn’t…JAYAPAL: That’s right. INSKEEP: …Look at the document. JAYAPAL: Exactly”.
Jayapat asked Bondi, “Will you turn to them now and apologize for what your Department of Justice has put them through with the absolutely unacceptable release of the Epstein files and their information?” Bondi invoked Garland, and then, not surprisingly, demurred. “I’m not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics,” Bondi said, waving her hand dismissively.”
Probably the low moment of the hearing was Bondi’s insult to Jaime Raskin. According to a story in The Guardian, “Bondi also sparred heavily with Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, as he sought to prevent the attorney general from using long meandering answers to eat up the five minutes members are allotted to ask questions. When Raskin said he had warned Bondi about eating up time at the outset of the hearing, Bondi replied by yelling: ‘You don’t tell me anything. ‘You’re a washed-up loser lawyer. You’re not even a lawyer,’ she said to Raskin.”
Such childish insults speak for themselves. Let’s do everything we can to remove this utter incompetent from office!
Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikipedia.
