Former Attorney General Pam Bondi faced an explosive public confrontation during a House Oversight Committee field hearing in West Palm Beach, Florida, as Epstein survivors, their attorneys, and committee members accused her of prioritising protection of powerful individuals over transparency and accountability in the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Bondi, who was fired by President Donald Trump on April 2 following sustained bipartisan criticism of the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files, appeared before the committee after months of delay and legal wrangling over whether her removal from office ended her obligation to comply with a subpoena issued in her professional capacity.
Survivors and their attorney Gloria Allred described Bondi as having destroyed the trust that victims had placed in the Justice Department, with Allred stating that Bondi had betrayed victims by failing to protect their personal identifying information while simultaneously redacting the names of high-profile individuals associated with Epstein from the released files.
The committee’s Republican members announced at the hearing that Bondi would formally testify before the full committee on May 29, following a separate contempt resolution introduced by Democrats after Bondi skipped a previously scheduled deposition on April 14.
Democrats argued that Bondi remained legally obligated to testify despite her dismissal from government, with Representative Robert Garcia stating: “Pam Bondi has illegally defied our committee, skipped her deposition, and has refused to cooperate. We have introduced a contempt resolution, to hold her accountable.”
At a prior congressional hearing in February, Bondi had defended the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files in combative terms, insulting Democratic questioners and praising Trump while expressing deep sympathy for victims without directly apologising for the failures survivors had identified.
The DOJ under Bondi missed its December 19, 2025 deadline for a full file release mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the subsequent release was criticised for redacting prominent names while inadvertently exposing potentially identifying details about victims, a contradiction that drew criticism from members of both parties.
Among the more charged moments surfaced in social media clips from the hearing was a confrontation in which a committee member told Bondi that she had “risked her job for Epstein,” a reference to the criticism that the DOJ’s failures reflected institutional deference to powerful figures connected to Epstein rather than a good-faith commitment to transparency.
