Attorney General Pam Bondi put on an astonishingly contemptuous performance as she faced questions from lawmakers over her leadership of the Justice Department and handling of files relating to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a Wednesday hearing.
One congressman likened her showing to one of the great villains of literature.
Seated before the House Judiciary Committee, Bondi responded to questions on the Epstein files with shouting, insults, sarcasm and eye rolls.
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Similar to her last time out before Congress in October, President Donald Trump’s top law enforcement officer pivoted to political and personal attacks when pressed by Democrats about the Epstein scandal and other controversies engulfing her department, including the Trump administration’s unsuccessful effort to indict Democratic lawmakers who urged active duty troops to defy “illegal orders.”
She attempted to divert attention toward a handful of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in Democratic panel members’ districts, instead of answering their questions on other topics.
During one astonishing moment, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) asked Epstein survivors in the hearing room to stand and raise their hands if they had been unable to meet with officials from Bondi’s department. Every one of them did.
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In the exchange that followed, Bondi refused to apologize to them, and slammed Jayapal’s tactics.
“I’m not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics,” Bondi boomed.
In another extraordinary flashpoint, the attorney general went back and forth with Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) as he attempted to ask how many of Epstein’s co-conspirators her department had been indicted.
“Here we go with these theatrics,” Bondi snapped, prompting Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the committee, to intervene and tell her not to filibuster.
“You don’t tell me anything,” Bondi fired back, accusing Raskin of being a “washed-up lawyer.”
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The confrontational tone was set when Raskin unloaded on Bondi during his opening statement.
Raskin accused Bondi of “running a massive Epstein cover-up” by not fully releasing all the files, and claimed she has acted with “staggering incompetence, cold indifference and jaded cruelty.”
More broadly, he said Bondi had “turned the people’s Department of Justice into Trump’s instrument of revenge.”
“Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time,” he said.
Raskin noted Bondi had bought a “binder of smears” to attack senators at her last congressional hearing, and urged the Trump official to “set the burn book aside and answer our questions.”
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The plea fell on deaf ears, even when sparring with Republicans. Bondi called Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) “a failed politician” and “hypocrite” with “Trump derangement syndrome” when he tried to hold her accountable for the Justice Department’s mishandling of redactions in the Epstein files.
Bondi defended the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files by raving about the stock market in another eye-popping moment.
In response to criticism from Nadler over the Epstein debacle, she pointed to how the Dow Jones Industrial Average had just surpassed a 50,000-point milestone, thanks to Trump.
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“He is the most transparent president in the nation’s history, and none of them, none of them asked [Joe Biden’s Attorney General] Merrick Garland over the last four years one word about Jeffrey Epstein. How ironic is that? You know why? Because Donald Trump — the Dow. The Dow right now is over — the Dow is over 50,000,” she said.
Raskin laughed from the dais.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing. You’re a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin,” Bondi said. “The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7000, and the Nasdaq smashing records, Americans’ 401(k)s and retirement savings are booming. That’s what we should be talking about.”
At the moment of Bondi’s statement, the Dow had actually dipped back below 50,000.
During another frank exchange over the Epstein probe, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) accused Bondi of acting out a “Jekyll & Hyde kind of routine,” a reference to the Robert Louis Stevenson story about a scientist who drinks a potion and then leads a nefarious double life.
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“You’re nice to the Republicans and you turn like Hyde on the Democrats,” Johnson explained to her.