Republican Rep. Thomas Massie roasted Attorney General Pam Bondi after she showed up on Capitol Hill with prepared insults to lob at critics while refusing to answer questions about Jeffrey Epstein.
For hours while being grilled by lawmakers, Bondi repeatedly flipped through her binder while attacking lawmakers who dared to challenge her over the Justice Department’s botched handling of the documents on the pedophile.
“A funny thing about Bondi’s insults to members of Congress who had serious questions: Staff literally gave her flash cards with individualized insults, but she couldn’t memorize them, so you can see her shuffle through them to find the flash-cards-insult that matches the member,” Massie wrote on X on Wednesday afternoon.
The Kentucky lawmaker and regular Trump critic, who forced the vote to release the Epstein files, was one of the only GOP members to challenge Bondi over the Epstein probe.
Massie blasted Bondi for the Justice Department’s failure to redact survivors’ names and information while protecting alleged co-conspirators in the released files.
Bondi shot back at Massie with “You’re a failed politician” and “This guy has Trump Derangement Syndrome” in their combative exchange.
By the end of it, Massie could barely keep a straight face as he pushed Bondi to answer him. Speaking to reporters outside the hearing room moments later, he ripped into her for using incompetence as a defense.
Throughout the hearing, the attorney general also refused to answer Democrats’ questions and instead referred to prepared talking points to attack them.
It was similar to how other Trump Cabinet members and top officials including FBI Director Kash Patel have shown up to testify.
A close-up of the attorney general’s papers at one point showed she had printed out Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s search history from when the Washington congresswoman went to review the unredacted Epstein documents, indicating that the Justice Department was tracking lawmakers viewing the documents to potentially use against them.
“It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files,” Jayapal wrote on X. “Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched. That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop this spying on members.”
Bondi’s stonewalling and attempts to tear down Democrats started to become a pattern throughout the hearing.
When a Democrat’s time for questioning expired, Bondi would ask the next Republican lawmaker if she could take 20 seconds first to respond to their Democratic colleagues. They all let her.
She would then rattle off her insults from prepared pages or hold up images of what she claimed were convicted undocumented immigrants from their districts.
![Attorney General Pam Bondi with her binder of prepared notes and insults as she appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on February 11, 2026.]](https://www.thedailybeast.com/resizer/v2/FUR75T4F6JBNVEMZW2XUGDG23Q.jpg?auth=7ccfc321f94b5ddb0a3bb46d30e72b4985a4166ff1fffa695f4820129895b7b1&width=800&height=533)
But her prepared burn book backfired at one point and was repeatedly mocked by Democratic lawmakers throughout the hours-long aggressive grilling.
When Bondi flipped to her list of insults about Rep. Becca Balint, she accused the Vermont lawmaker of not voting for a resolution amid the heightened antisemitism in the U.S.
“Oh, do you want to go there, attorney general?” the Jewish lawmaker furiously shouted at her. “Are you serious, talking about antisemitism to a woman who lost her grandfather in the Holocaust? Really?”
The attorney general sat with her arms crossed and a smug look on her face as Balint laid into her.
Other Democrats, predicting what was coming, invited Bondi directly to share her comebacks as their time for questioning expired.
“Let’s hear the opposition research,” Rep. Chuy Garcia said after blasting Bondi as “one of the worst attorney generals in history and an instrument of Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda.”
Bondi went on to dramatically declare Garcia was not running for office again but then admitted she did not know why while consulting her notes.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz took it one step further by pulling out a board at the end of his comments and taunting her.
“Because I’m curious, and I’d just, I’d like to see, flip to the Jared Moskowitz section of the binder,” he said, grinning. “I’m interested to see what staff provided on the oppo on me, and because we’re in the Olympics, I’m going to give it a grade.”
As he spoke, he uncapped a marker and said: “I just want to see how good it is, so give me your best one.”
The attorney general accused him of mocking the Bible in his earlier comments after he held up the Trump Bible while speaking, which he denied, but she wouldn’t indulge him further.
“I want it from the burn book. I want it from the burn book. Which is the best one? What’d you got?” he kept going.
As he spoke, he tapped his marker on the whiteboard as if bracing to score her. When she refused to respond, he could be seen writing a large zero on it.
