Attorney General Pam Bondi turned a House Judiciary Committee hearing into a masterclass in political accountability on Wednesday, ripping into Democrats who spent years ignoring Jeffrey Epstein's crimes only to suddenly discover their outrage now that a Republican administration is doing the work their side never bothered to attempt.
The hearing — ostensibly about the release of files related to the Epstein prosecution — devolved into a series of clashes between Bondi and Democratic members, with Ranking Member Jamie Raskin absorbing the sharpest blow. Bondi called him a "washed-up, loser lawyer — not even a lawyer" after he accused her of filibustering during questioning.
It was that kind of afternoon.
As reported by the New York Post, the core tension of the hearing was impossible for Democrats to escape. More than 3 million pages of investigative materials on Epstein and his convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell have been released under a bill co-authored by Rep. Thomas Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, signed by President Trump last November. The release happened on this administration's watch. The silence happened on the last one.
Bondi drove that point like a nail:
"None of them asked [former Attorney General] Merrick Garland, over the last four years, one word about Jeffrey Epstein. How ironic is that? You know why? Because Donald Trump."
That framing is difficult to argue with. Democrats controlled the Judiciary Committee. They had Garland in the same chair. They chose to spend that time on other pursuits. Now they want credit for caring about Epstein's victims — the same victims the DOJ under their preferred attorney general apparently never warranted a single question about.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal tried a theatrical move, asking Epstein victims or their family members in attendance to stand and raise their hand if they had not been able to meet with the current Department of Justice. Bondi didn't take the bait:
"Why didn't she ask Merrick Garland this twice when he sat in my chair? I'm not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics."
Raskin came in swinging. He accused Bondi of siding with perpetrators and ignoring victims — not just on Epstein, but on what he called "homicidal government violence against citizens in Minneapolis," a reference the article provided no context for and Raskin apparently felt no obligation to substantiate.
"You're not showing a lot of interest in the victims. Whether it's Epstein's human trafficking ring or the homicidal government violence against citizens in Minneapolis, as attorney general you're siding with the perpetrators and you're ignoring the victims."
This is the rhetorical equivalent of throwing everything at the wall. Epstein's trafficking ring and an unrelated Minneapolis grievance crammed into a single breath, designed to create an emotional impression rather than an argument. Raskin then complained that Bondi was filibustering — a rich accusation from a man who used his own time to deliver a two-topic indictment with no connective tissue.
When Raskin demanded that Chairman Jim Jordan restore time to Rep. Jerry Nadler and warned Bondi about speaking on "our time," her response was clean:
"You don't tell me anything."
The retiring New York Democrat didn't fare much better. Bondi confronted him directly over past claims that President Trump conspired with foreign actors in the 2016 election:
"You said the president conspired, sought foreign interference in the 2016 election. Robert Mueller found no evidence, none, of foreign interference in 2016. Have you apologized to President Trump?"
The hearing record does not reflect an apology. What it reflects is an attorney general unwilling to let Democrats use their time without being reminded of how they spent the last decade.
"You all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it. I'm not going to put up with it."
Perhaps the most damning detail of the hearing wasn't a quote from the dais — it was a fact about one of the members' colleagues. According to reporting, US Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett texted with Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 House Oversight Committee hearing to get tips about questioning ex-Trump legal fixer Michael Cohen.
A sitting member of Congress was taking advice from a man who had already pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution and was registered as a sex offender. A representative for Plaskett previously acknowledged Epstein had contacted her among other "staff, constituents, and the public at large, offering advice, support, and in some cases partisan vitriol."
Former Bondi chief of staff Chad Mizelle connected the dots:
"Jerry Nadler attacking Attorney General Bondi over Epstein, while his colleague Rep. Plaskett was using Jeffrey Epstein as a confidant and adviser, is the height of hypocrisy."
Democrats want to be the party of accountability on Epstein. Their own members were in his text messages. That contradiction doesn't need editorial commentary — it speaks fluently on its own.
The hearing wasn't exclusively a left-right affair. Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the co-authors of the very legislation that produced the document release, turned his fire on Bondi over how the DOJ handled redactions. He showed three documents he described as "emblematic of the massive failure of the DOJ to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act" and argued that potential co-conspirators' names had been blacked out while some victims' identities were exposed.
"Literally the worst thing you could do to the survivors, you did."
Bondi addressed the redaction issue directly, committing to correct errors in both directions:
"If any man's name was redacted that should not have been, we will of course unredact it. If a victim's name was unredacted, please bring it to us, and we will redact it."
She also told Chairman Jordan that Massie "has Trump Derangement Syndrome" and called him a "failed politician" — a notable choice of words aimed at a Republican ally of the legislation. The redaction question is legitimate. The process of releasing 3 million pages of investigative materials is massive, and errors in a release of that scale are correctable. What matters is whether the administration fixes them — and Bondi committed on the record to doing so.
Strip away the theatrics, and what Wednesday's hearing revealed is simple. The Trump administration released more than 3 million pages of Epstein-related materials. The previous administration released none. Democrats who had four years and a willing attorney general to demand transparency on one of the most significant sex trafficking cases in American history chose instead to focus on partisan investigations. Now they want to interrogate the people who actually opened the files.
Mizelle summarized it without excess:
"The Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee did nothing to bring justice and transparency to the Epstein saga. Attorney General Pam Bondi has."
Epstein's victims were in that hearing room. They didn't come to watch Democrats perform outrage they never felt when their own party held the gavel. They came because someone finally released the files — and it wasn't Merrick Garland.
