Former Attorney General Pam Bondi will testify next month before the House Oversight Committee about her role in handling the release of the Epstein files, Republicans on the committee said Wednesday.
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“We have secured Bondi’s appearance for May 29,” an X account for the Republican members of the Oversight committee wrote following weeks of demands from Democrats on the committee that Bondi should testify despite the fact that she is no longer serving as attorney general.
Oversight committee Democrats earlier on Wednesday wrote on X that they had filed contempt charges against Bondi for, “illegally [defying] our committee, skipp[ing] her deposition, and refus[ing] to cooperate.”
In a response, the GOP committee members said they’d scheduled Bondi’s deposition and accused Democrats of “theater” and “completely unnecessary” behavior.
House Oversight Democrats later took credit for Republicans’ decision to publicly name a date for Bondi’s deposition, writing in a separate post on X, “Well look at this … 45 minutes after we file contempt charges against Pam Bondi for defying her subpoena to testify, @GOPoversight finally announces a date for her appearance.”
Five Republicans joined all the Democrats on the Oversight Committee in March to vote to subpoena Bondi for testimony related to the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files. The deposition that stemmed from that vote was set to be held in mid-April.
But after President Donald Trump fired Bondi earlier this month, the Justice Department notified the Oversight Committee that she would no longer appear for the deposition. The DOJ argued that Bondi had been subpoenaed in her official role as attorney general and she was no longer serving in that role.
Democrats on the Oversight Committee argued that Bondi’s testimony was still vital, given that she had served at the top of the department during the release of the Epstein files.
In an interview with NBC News’“Meet the Press” earlier this month, Oversight Committee member Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., compared Bondi’s potential testimony with that of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s. Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, each testified in a closed-door deposition before the committee after the former president appeared in a series of photographs released with the Epstein files.
Bill Clinton has denied any wrongdoing related to Jeffrey Epstein and Hillary Clinton has said that she never met him.
“I mean, if we could chase Hillary Clinton, who hasn’t been in office for 20 years, certainly we can get Pam Bondi to explain why she covered up documents, why we haven’t had prosecution,” Khanna said on “Meet the Press.”
Last year, Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., led the charge in Congress to pass a law compelling the Justice Department to release all files in the agency’s possession related to Epstein.
In December, the department began releasing the Epstein files online, with several file drops occurring over the next several weeks.
The Justice Department has been heavily criticized by some lawmakers, Epstein survivors and right-wing media figures for how the agency has handled the release of the Epstein files.
The department’s internal watchdog is set to review whether the agency is compliant with the law that compelled the release of the Epstein files. And an independent group, the Government Accountability Office, is also reviewing the Justice Department’s handling of the release of the files at the request of a bipartisan group of senators.
DOJ officials, including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, have defended the department’s handling of the files, including criticism from survivors that some of their personal information wasn’t properly redacted.
“Sometimes it was genuine mistakes and that’s human, and that doesn’t make it right. I’m not excusing that, but you’re talking about less than 1% by the way, as far as we know it’s fixed,” Blanche told NBC News earlier this month.
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