Pam Bondi accused of hiding names of Epstein associates
A US lawmaker has accused Attorney General Pam Bondi of concealing the names of powerful associates of late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Bondi faced questions about the Justice Department’s handling of investigative files at an impeachment hearing before a House panel.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who led the effort to demand the release of the files, accused the Justice Department of a “massive failure” to comply with the law.
He questioned why billionaire Leslie Wexner’s name was omitted from an FBI document listing potential accomplices in the sex trafficking investigation into Epstein.
Bondi said Wexner’s name appeared multiple times in other files the department released, and that the Justice Department did not redact his name in the document “within 40 minutes” of Massie noticing it.
“I caught you red-handed for forty minutes,” Massie replied.
Bondi had another series of heated confrontations with members of the House Judiciary Committee, who expressed frustration with the amount of Epstein material the department had redacted and withheld.
Many victims of Epstein’s alleged crimes watched from the public gallery.
The Justice Department released the final tranche of more than three million pages of documents in late January, drawing renewed attention to the wealthy and powerful individuals who maintained ties to Epstein even after he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution.
Lawmakers complained that the redactions in the filings went beyond the limited exemptions allowed in the law that Congress passed almost unanimously in November. The ministry also refused to release large amounts of material, citing legal privileges.
On multiple occasions, Bondi has responded to criticism by making personal attacks on lawmakers and heaping praise on President Donald Trump.
As he flipped through the dossier, he accused Democrats of being indifferent to crime victims in their districts and called the panel’s top Democrat an “incompetent lawyer,” a particularly partisan tone from the chief of law enforcement in the United States.
He said more than 500 Justice Department attorneys were working on a compressed timeline to review vast amounts of material. He said the disclosure of the victims’ identities was unintentional.
“I’ve spent my entire career fighting for victims, and I will continue to do so,” Bondi said in her opening statement on Wednesday US time.
Wexner, the former CEO and founder of L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret, hired Epstein as his personal money manager starting in the 1980s.
He accused Epstein of using his money to buy property and goods and said he cut ties around 2007 after Epstein was first charged.
Wexner denied knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities and was not charged with criminal wrongdoing.
The Epstein files dogged Bondi throughout his tenure as Trump’s attorney general. The Justice Department’s initial decision not to release any more material sparked an angry response from some of Trump’s online supporters.
This brought new perspective to Trump’s past friendship with Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington asked Bondi to apologize to the victims of Epstein’s alleged crimes, who sat in the public gallery for the department to hand out the files, which in some cases included releasing the names of the victims.
Bondi questioned why Jayapal didn’t ask the same question of her predecessor under Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration and said she “won’t fall into the ditch for her theatrics.”
Bondi’s appearance before the Republican-controlled panel came the day after a federal grand jury declined to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video urging the U.S. military to disobey illegal orders.
The department’s tradition of independence in criminal investigations has been eroded as it pursues investigations of Trump’s political rivals and aligns with his complaints.
