Attorney General Pam Bondi walked into her first House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Wednesday expecting to take a victory lap. She walked out having called a Republican congressman a “failed politician,”
labeled the committee’s top Democrat a “washed-up loser lawyer,” and left multiple Epstein survivors sitting behind her wondering why the nation’s top law enforcement official wouldn’t turn around and look them in the eye.
The five-hour hearing, officially titled “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice,” became a full-blown circus over one topic: the DOJ’s botched handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. And here is the part that should worry the White House: it was not just Democrats swinging. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who co-authored the very law requiring the files’ release, tore into Bondi with the kind of fury usually reserved for opposition witnesses.
The Bipartisan Fury Nobody Saw Coming
Let’s be clear about what happened here. The Epstein Files Transparency Act passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Trump himself in November 2025. It required the DOJ to release all unclassified Epstein-related records in a searchable format within 30 days. The department blew past that deadline by more than a month, and what it did release has been a mess: victims’ names left unredacted while the identities of powerful men were blacked out.
Massie, who spent two hours reviewing unredacted files at the DOJ with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna just days before the hearing, came loaded for bear. He showed evidence that Les Wexner, the billionaire Victoria’s Secret founder once labeled an Epstein “co-conspirator” by the FBI, had his name redacted in key documents while victims’ personal information was left exposed for anyone to find.
Bondi’s response to a sitting Republican congressman pressing legitimate questions about a law signed by the president? She accused him of having “Trump derangement syndrome” and called him a “failed politician.” For context, Trump has endorsed Massie’s primary opponent. The attack felt less like oversight testimony and more like a loyalty test administered from the witness chair.
Massie was having none of it. He cut her off and delivered the line of the day: “This is bigger than Watergate. This cover-up spans decades, and you are responsible for this portion of it.”
Even Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican not exactly known for bucking his party, pressed Bondi on why survivors’ names were exposed while accused co-conspirators got protection. He called it “troubling” and “concerning.” When even your allies are using words like that in a public hearing, you have a problem.
Democrats Brought the Receipts
If Republicans delivered uncomfortable questions, Democrats brought a full-blown prosecution. Ranking member Jamie Raskin opened with a broadside that set the tone for the entire day, accusing Bondi of running a “massive Epstein cover-up right out of the Department of Justice.” He pointed out that while the DOJ was required to turn over six million documents, only three million had been released, many with heavy redactions.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington produced the hearing’s most devastating visual moment. With Epstein survivors seated directly behind Bondi, Jayapal showed documents side by side: one where the DOJ carefully concealed the identity of an Epstein associate, and another where victims’ names were left completely exposed. She then asked the survivors to raise their hands if they had met with anyone from the Justice Department. Every single one raised their hand to say they had not.
Jayapal asked Bondi to turn around, face the survivors, and apologize. Bondi refused, calling it “theatrics” and pivoting to attack former AG Merrick Garland’s handling of Epstein during the Biden era. The deflection has become Bondi’s go-to move: whenever confronted with a direct question about current failures, point backward at the last administration.
The Burn Book That Backfired
Then came the bombshell that may outlast the hearing itself. Photojournalists spotted a document in Bondi’s black binder labeled “Jayapal Pramila Search History,” a printout showing exactly which Epstein files the congresswoman had searched when she visited the DOJ to review unredacted documents.
Think about what that means. The Justice Department set up computers for lawmakers to review sensitive files, created unique logins and passwords for each member, and then apparently tracked what they searched and handed that intelligence to the AG before a congressional oversight hearing. If confirmed, this is the executive branch surveilling the legislative branch’s preparation for its own oversight, a breathtaking separation-of-powers violation.
Jayapal was furious. “Is this the whole reason they opened the files up to us two days early? So they could essentially surveil members to see what we were going to ask her about?” she said afterward. She announced she is organizing a letter demanding an investigation.
Raskin said he would ask the DOJ Inspector General to investigate, calling it an “outrageous abuse of power.” Even House Speaker Mike Johnson, when pressed by reporters, conceded it “would be inappropriate if it happened.”
The Walkouts, The Insults, and The Survivors Left Behind
The hearing produced a remarkable series of confrontations that went far beyond typical Capitol Hill theater. Rep. Ted Lieu of California showed footage of Trump and Epstein together at a party, then displayed an FBI document summarizing a witness tip about Trump’s activities. When Lieu said he believed Bondi had lied under oath, she fired back: “Don’t you ever accuse me of a crime.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas used her time not to ask questions but to deliver a verdict, calling Bondi “one of the worst attorney generals in history” who had “prioritized obstruction over justice, corruption over the law, fealty to the president over loyalty to the Constitution.” Crockett referenced FBI files describing Epstein transporting a victim to Mar-a-Lago and noted Trump’s close associations with men implicated in the files. She then walked out.
Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont stormed out after Bondi implied she had voted against a resolution condemning antisemitism. “Are you serious? Talking about antisemitism to a woman who lost her grandfather in the Holocaust?” Balint shouted before leaving.
Through it all, Bondi deployed a consistent strategy: cede Republican time to deliver counterattacks, deflect every substantive question about Epstein to prior administrations, and treat any criticism as a personal insult requiring retaliation. She called Raskin a “washed-up loser lawyer.” She told Rep. Dan Goldman he was “about as good of a lawyer today as you were when you tried to impeach President Trump.” After nearly every exchange with Democrats, she asked the next Republican to give her their time so she could respond.
Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia captured the dynamic perfectly: “You do a Jekyll and Hyde kind of routine around here. You’re nice to the Republicans and you turn like Hyde on Democrats.”
What Actually Matters: The Names and The Cover-Up
Lost in the shouting is the substance that should terrify powerful people on both sides of the political aisle. The day before the hearing, Rep. Khanna took to the House floor and named six men whose identities had been improperly redacted in the Epstein files: Les Wexner, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem (the head of Dubai’s DP World), Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, and Nicola Caputo. Khanna and Massie found these names in just two hours of reviewing unredacted files.
“If we found six men they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those three million files,” Khanna said. The inclusion of these names does not imply criminal wrongdoing, but the fact that the DOJ redacted them despite the Transparency Act’s prohibition on redactions due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity” is damning.
Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell remains the only person behind bars in connection with Epstein. She was convicted in 2021 and is serving 20 years. Not a single additional co-conspirator has been indicted under Bondi’s DOJ. When Rep. Nadler asked how many co-conspirators had been charged, Bondi could only say there were “pending investigations” without offering details.
The Bigger Picture
Here is what Wednesday made clear: the Epstein files have become the rare issue where the standard partisan playbook completely breaks down. A Republican congressman who co-wrote the transparency law is calling it “bigger than Watergate.” A Democratic congressman is naming names from the House floor. Survivors are showing up to hearings and raising their hands to show the DOJ will not even meet with them. And the Attorney General’s primary defense strategy is personal insults and backward-looking deflection.
Bondi repeatedly argued that Democrats were raising Epstein to distract from Trump’s economic record, pointing to the stock market. But it was Trump who signed the Transparency Act. It was his administration that promised accountability. And it is his DOJ that is redacting the names of powerful men while accidentally exposing the identities of teenage girls who were abused.
The hearing was supposed to be about oversight of the Justice Department. It ended up being a case study in why the department needs it. When the nation’s top lawyer treats legitimate questions from her own party as “Trump derangement syndrome” and refuses to face the survivors sitting six feet behind her, something has gone deeply wrong with the institution she is supposed to lead.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has since indicated that the review of Epstein files is essentially over and that no further prosecutions are expected. If that holds, then the Epstein Files Transparency Act, for all its bipartisan promise, will have produced millions of pages of documents, zero new indictments, and a hearing that devolved into a screaming match while survivors watched from the gallery, still waiting for someone in power to simply turn around and acknowledge them.