WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday reportedly blamed Todd Blanche, now the acting head of the Justice Department, for any shortcomings in its handling of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
“Acting AG Blanche was managing the entire investigation,” Bondi told lawmakers, according to Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.).
“Talk with Todd Blanche. I don’t know anything about it,” Bondi said repeatedly, according to Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.).
Bondi came to Capitol Hill on Friday in response to a bipartisan subpoena issued by the House Oversight Committee before she’d been ousted from her job as the country’s top cop. Democrats called the hearing a continuation of the department’s cover-up of the Epstein case and said Justice Department lawyers prevented Bondi from answering some questions. Democrats complained the meeting was a transcribed interview rather than a sworn, videotaped deposition.
“This is absolutely a cover-up and a smokescreen to prevent Pam Bondi from having to testify under oath pursuant to a congressional subpoena,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) told reporters.
The Epstein saga punctuated both Bondi’s rise and her downfall during the second Trump administration. Early in her tenure, Bondi declared she had Epstein’s mythical “client list” on her desk. The Justice Department last summer said no such list existed and that it would release no further material from its past prosecution of Epstein, a former friend of Trump’s who killed himself while facing sex trafficking charges in 2019.
The sudden stonewalling sparked a furor among Trump supporters who’d expected the administration to release the Epstein files. The House Oversight Committee demanded the documents in a bipartisan subpoena, and Congress passed a law requiring their release. The Justice Department dragged its feet but ultimately uploaded thousands of documents to a searchable online database.
“The bottom line is: Justice and transparency in this matter have been delivered at the direction of President Trump and his administration,” Bondi said in a written opening statement Friday.
But some Epstein documents were held back, including FBI interview notes with a woman who claimed Trump sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s after Epstein introduced them. (The allegation has not been substantiated.) The department then released some, but not all, of the records after journalists pointed out they were listed on an index of evidence in the trial of Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Bondi told lawmakers she had nothing to do with Maxwell’s transfer to a lower-security prison camp last year, a move that occurred after Maxwell sat for an unusual transcribed interview with Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal attorney. During that interview, Maxwell said she never witnessed improper behavior by Trump when he was in Epstein’s company.
“We asked questions about Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer, and again [Bondi] referred those questions to Todd Blanche and the Bureau of Prisons,” Garcia said.