Besieged by questions about Epstein and accusations from a weaponized Justice Department, Bondi pivoted aggressively in an extraordinary speech in which she mocked her Democratic questioners, praised Trump on the stock market’s performance and openly aligned herself as in sync with a president she portrayed as a victim of past impeachments and investigations.
“You’re sitting here and you’re attacking the president, and I’m not going to stand for that,” Bondi told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee. “I don’t agree with it.”
With Epstein’s victims sitting behind her in the interrogation room, Bondi vigorously defended the department’s handling of the files related to the well-connected financier, an issue that has dogged her tenure. She accused Democrats of using the Epstein files to distract from Trump’s successes, even though it was Republicans who caused the fuss over the files and Bondi himself fanned the flames last year by handing out binders to conservative influencers in the White House.
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The hearing quickly devolved into a partisan brawl, with Bondi repeatedly insulting Democrats while insisting she would not “end up in the gutter with them.” In a particularly fiery exchange, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland accused Bondi of refusing to answer his questions, prompting the attorney general to call the top Democrat on the committee a “washed-up loser lawyer — not even a lawyer.”
In an effort to help Bondi amid a barrage of Democratic criticism, Republicans tried to keep the focus on simple law enforcement issues such as violent crime and illegal immigration. For her part, Bondi repeatedly dodged questions from Democrats and instead responded with attacks seemingly ripped from the headlines as she tried to portray them as uninterested in violence in their districts. Democrats became irritated when Bondi repeatedly refused to answer directly.
“This is pathetic. This is pathetic,” said Rep. Becca Balint, a Vermont Democrat who tried to ask Bondi about several Trump administration officials revealed to have ties to Epstein. “I’m not asking trick questions here. The American people have a right to know the answers to these.”
Bondi has struggled to move past the backlash over the Epstein files since she distributed the folders to a group of social media influencers in February 2025. The folders contained no new revelations about Epstein, leading to further calls from Trump’s base for the files to be released.
In her opening statement, Bondi told Epstein victims to report any information about their abuse to police and said she was “deeply sorry” for what they had suffered. She told survivors that “any allegation of criminal misconduct will be taken seriously and investigated.”
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But she refused under pressure from Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., to turn around and face the Epstein victims in the audience and apologize for what Trump’s Justice Department “did to them.” She accused the Democrat of being “theatrical.”
Bondi’s appearance on Capitol Hill came a year into her tumultuous tenure, which has heightened concerns that the Justice Department is using its law enforcement powers to attack the president’s political enemies. Just a day earlier, the department tried to secure charges against Democratic lawmakers who produced a video calling on military service members to disobey “illegal orders.” But in an extraordinary rebuke to prosecutors, a grand jury in Washington declined to bring charges.
Ignoring criticism that the Department of Justice has become politicized under her watch, Bondi praised the department’s work to reduce violent crime and said she was determined to return the department to its core functions after what she described as “years of bloated bureaucracy and political weaponization.”
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan praised Bondi for undoing actions under President Joe Biden’s Justice Department that Republicans say unfairly targeted conservatives — including Trump, who was charged in two federal criminal cases that were dropped after his 2024 election victory.
“What a difference a year makes,” Jordan said. “Under Attorney General Bondi, the DOJ has returned to its core responsibilities: upholding the rule of law, going after the bad guys, and protecting Americans.”
Meanwhile, Democrats have excoriated Bondi for haphazard redactions to the Epstein files that exposed intimate details about victims and included nude photos. An investigation by The Associated Press and other news organizations has found numerous examples of sloppy, inconsistent or non-existent redactions that exposed sensitive private information.
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“You are siding with the perpetrators and ignoring the victims,” Raskin told Bondi in his opening statement. “That will be your legacy unless you act quickly to change course. You are conducting a massive Epstein cover-up straight from the Justice Department.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who broke with his party to advance legislation forcing the release of the Epstein files, also took Bondi to task for the release of victims’ personal information, telling her, “Literally the worst thing you could do to survivors, you did it.”
Bondi told Massie that he was only focusing on the dossiers because Trump is mentioned in them, calling him a “hypocrite” with “Trump derangement syndrome.”
Department officials have said they made efforts to protect survivors, but mistakes were inevitable given the volume of the materials and the speed at which the department had to release them. Bondi told lawmakers that the Department of Justice had deleted files when it was made aware that they contained information from victims, and said staff had tried “to do their utmost within the time frame allotted by the legislation” requiring the release of the files.
After raising conservatives’ expectations last year with promises of transparency, the Justice Department said in July that it had completed an investigation and determined that no Epstein “client list” existed and that there was no reason to make additional files public. That caused an outcry that prompted Congress to pass legislation requiring the Justice Department to release the files.
The admission that the well-connected Epstein did not have a list of clients to whom underage girls were trafficked represented a public walk-back on a theory the Trump administration had helped promote when Bondi suggested in a Fox News interview last year that it was on her desk for review. Bondi later said she was referring to the Epstein files in total, and not to a specific client list.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
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