Attorney General Pam Bondi exploded in a shouting match with Democrats after she was accused of lying under oath over the Epstein files and repeatedly confronted over her botched handling of the saga.
In extraordinary scenes on Capitol Hill, Donald Trump’s handpicked chief lawmaker spent the morning yelling at members of Congress, accusing them of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and refusing to answer questions as Jeffrey Epstein’s stunned victims watched in the public gallery.
“The Dow is over 50,000 dollars!” she screamed at one point under questioning from House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing. You’re a great stock trader as I hear, Raskin. The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq smashing records. That’s what we should be talking about!”
The exchange was one of many barbs Bondi lodged as she came under scrutiny in Congress for the first time since her department released its final tranche of files relating to Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
While the attorney general began by declaring she was “deeply sorry” for what victims went through, things quickly went downhill as Democrats began probing her about Trump’s links to the sex offender, her department’s lack of prosecutions and how she had personally handled the files.
In another startling moment, Bondi once again clashed with Raskin as he tried to get her to address a question from Democrat Jerry Nadler about how many co-conspirators, if any, she was investigating.
The attorney general began by pointing angrily at Nadler and filibustering to run out the clock.
“You can let her filibuster all you want, but not on our watch,” Raskin intervened, addressing committee chairman Jim Jordan and then Bondi. “I told you about that, Attorney General.”
An incredulous Bondi then fired back: “You don’t tell me anything, you washed up, loser lawyer!”
Later, she told Raskin he had “Trump Derangement Syndrome” after he asked about Trump seeking $10 billion from taxpayers as part of a lawsuit he has filed against the federal Internal Revenue Service.
Things became so chaotic at one point that the Trump-friendly Fox News cut away from televising the live hearing.
But the session took yet another turn when Democrat Ted Lieu played a video of Trump and Epstein partying together years ago, when the pair were still playboy socialites in Palm Beach and New York.
Asked if there were any underage girls at any party they attended, Bondi paused for a few seconds, pondering what to say.
“This is so ridiculous that they are trying to deflect from all the great things that Donald Trump has done,” she began.
“There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime - everyone knows that. This has been the most transparent presidency.”
Lieu then produced a file from a witness who tipped off the FBI with an uncorroborated allegation about a girl who claimed she had been raped by the president.
“I believe you just lied under oath,” he suggested.
“Don’t you ever accuse me of crime!” she clapped back.
The hearing took place weeks after the Justice Department released more than 3.5 million fresh files relating to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking networks.
But this was only about half of the six million documents the department reviewed, prompting renewed fears of a cover-up.
Trump, who has consistently claimed the files were a “hoax,” was initially featured about 5,300 times in the heavily redacted trove.
But after lawmakers were allowed to view unredacted versions of the files this week, his name reportedly appeared more than a million times, suggesting there is much more the public does not know.
Before the hearing, Epstein’s survivors and the families of victims spoke outside the U.S. Capitol to once again demand transparency.
Among them was Sky Roberts, the brother of Virginia Giuffre, who says Epstein’s associate recruited her as a teenager after meeting her while she worked at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
Roberts blasted the administration, saying its treatment of survivors had been nothing short of a failure.”
Bondi began the hearing reading an opening statement in which she apologized to survivors, telling them: “I am a career prosecutor, and despite what the ranking member said, I have spent my entire career fighting for victims, and I will continue to do so.”
“I am deeply sorry for what any victim, any victim, has been through, especially as a result of that monster,’ Bondi continued.
But things immediately spiraled from there as she remained defiant in the face of being called out for failing to redact survivors’ information in the released files.
“This is not about anybody who came before you. It is about you taking responsibility for your Department of Justice and the harm that it has done to the survivors who are standing right behind you and are waiting for you to turn to them and apologize for what your department of justice has done,” Washington Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal told her.
“I’m not going to get in the gutter with this woman,” Bondi hit back. “She’s doing theatrics.”
