Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday responded to House Democrats’ heated questions about the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files by chastising them for ignoring stock market gains and other of President Donald Trump‘s political wins.
“The Dow is over 50,000 right now,” Bondi said in sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee after Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., slammed her and the Department of Justice for the lack of indictments of possible co-conspirators of the convicted sex predator Epstein.
The S&P 500 is also up and the Nasdaq is “smashing records,” while Americans’ retirement accounts are “booming,” Bondi said after celebrating the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s gains. “That’s what we should be talking about.”
Democrats balked at the rhetoric, but Bondi doubled down.
“What does the Dow have to do with anything? That’s what they just asked. Are you kidding?” she said as Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, banged a gavel and called for order in the hearing room.
Trump has repeatedly cited stock market gains as a barometer for his presidency after being elected to a second term amid voter concerns about rising prices for consumer goods. The Dow closed above 50,000 for the first time on Friday and added to that record each day this week.
The DOJ oversight hearing had already devolved into partisan shouting matches on multiple occasions prior to Bondi’s references to the stock market.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the panel’s ranking member, in his opening remarks accused Bondi of “running a massive Epstein cover-up right out of the Department of Justice.”
Raskin pointed to the DOJ’s failure to release millions of files that it is legally bound to disclose under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed into law in November after reversing his opposition to the bill.
The lawmaker also slammed the DOJ for redacting the names of alleged Epstein co-conspirators and enablers in the records it did release, while failing to black out victims’ identifying information.
“So you ignored the law, and even with over 100,000 employees at your disposal, you acted with some mixture of staggering incompetence, cold indifference and jaded cruelty towards more than 1,000 victims, raped, abused and trafficked,” Raskin said. “This performance screams cover-up.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the first Democratic member to question Bondi, asked a group of Epstein survivors in the hearing room to stand up and raise their hands if they had been unable to meet with the DOJ.
After numerous women stood and all raised their hands, Jayapal asked Bondi to apologize for the “unacceptable release” of victims’ information in the Epstein files.
Bondi began to respond that former Attorney General Merrick Garland “sat in this chair twice,” at which point the congresswoman interrupted and pushed her to answer the question, and a back-and-forth ensued.
“I’m not gonna get in the gutter for her theatrics,” Bondi said.
More acrimonious exchanges followed as Bondi and Democrats continued to clash.
After Nadler’s speaking time expired, Bondi admonished the Democrats who participated in the impeachment hearings against Trump during his first administration, saying, “You all should be apologizing.”
“You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it. I’m not going to put up with it,” Bondi said.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a co-sponsor of the Epstein files bill, laced into Bondi as he called the DOJ’s redaction issues a “massive failure.”
He homed in on redactions that obscured the name of Les Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret, “as a co-conspirator in an FBI document.”
Bondi said that redaction was corrected “within 40 minutes.” Massie shot back, “40 minutes of me catching you red-handed.”
Bondi said Massie has “Trump derangement syndrome.”
