Former AG Pam Bondi to testify before oversight committee on Epstein files
May 29 (UPI) — Former Attorney General Pam Bondi is set to testify before the House Oversight Committee Friday over her handling of the release of the Epstein files.
The hearing will be behind closed doors and will not be filmed, and Bondi will not be under oath. But it will be transcribed, and that transcription will be released to the public.
The committee subpoenaed Bondi in March after months of releases. Her critics say she released files haphazardly and her team was sloppy in its redactions. The Epstein Files Transparency Act required the Department of Justice to redact only the name and identifiers of victims, but many of the files redacted the names of alleged perpetrators.
Convicted sex offender and billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges.
“We haven’t seen the full release of the files, so that’s already a violation of the law,” Dani Bensky, referencing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, told NPR. Bensky, who alleged that Epstein sexually abused her when she was a young ballet dancer, said Bondi’s release of the files without proper redactions, “sends such a chilling effect to the rest of the survivor community.”
“It should be transcribed, it should be filmed, and it should be publicly released as quickly as possible,” Bensky said. She added that transcription only isn’t good enough because, “context is lost.”
The survivors have repeated “same talking points over and over” to the DOJ, Bensky said. “And it’s just not getting any better.”
Some politicians are continuing to push for more transparency.
“We’re demanding that it be both videotaped under oath and released to the public,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the committee, told NPR.
The committee has questioned several important people about Epstein, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Clintons’ testimonies were recorded on video and the videos were released to the public.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., called it “highly disappointing” that Bondi would not appear for an official deposition.
“She deserves the same treatment as the Clintons and as everybody else,” Mace said. “I’ll be there, though, with bells on,” Mace said. “And I’ll be asking her the tough questions.”
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for human rights, will be alongside Bondi as her lawyer at the hearing, which has raised some eyebrows.
But legal scholars say it’s not unusual.
Barbara McQuade, former federal prosecutor and professor at the University of Michigan Law School, told NPR that when a government official testifies on issues of that office, “an attorney for the government often appears on behalf of the United States to assert privileges.”
Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., another member of the Oversight Committee, told Politico that “the lack of videotape … contributes to the feeling that Americans have that there’s been a cover-up here.”
“I think she recognizes that she doesn’t have good answers to the questions that we’re going to ask, and a videotape makes it more real and brings more attention to it,” Walkinshaw said.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., told Politico he wanted to ask Bondi what specific directives she received from Trump or others on the handling of the Epstein case.
“I spoke with some of the survivors in Florida,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., told Politico. “They were curious why [Bondi has] been hiding so much and what she has to hide herself. Why wouldn’t she be more forthcoming about the files? … Who got to her? What do they have on her? Those are the kinds of questions that the survivors are curious about.”
“So am I, and so are the American people,” he added.
