Former attorney general Pam Bondi has agreed to testify before Congress next month about the Justice Department’s handling of its release of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a spokesperson for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Wednesday.
The closed-door deposition, scheduled for May 29, will be the first time Bondi has appeared on Capitol Hill since President Donald Trump fired her as the nation’s top law enforcement official this month.
The committee had subpoenaed Bondi to appear before members on April 14. After her ouster, Justice Department officials said Bondi would not show upand asked the committee chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), to withdraw that request.
The announcement that Bondi had agreed to reschedule her appearance follows threats from Democrats on the panel that they would move to find her in contempt if she did not come to Capitol Hill to testify. Jessica Collins, the committee spokeswoman, announced the rescheduled date on Wednesday moments after Democrats took steps to advance that vote.
“That’s completely unnecessary,” Collins said of the Democrats’ contempt warnings. “Former attorney general Pam Bondi will appear on May 29.”
Bondi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Justice Department dismissed the warnings from committee Democrats as a stunt. “If Democrats expect this Justice Department to participate in their baseless witch hunt against the former Attorney General, they are more delusional than we thought,” the department said in a statement.
“While Democrats continue their performative crusade for ‘transparency,’ the Department has continued to voluntarily cooperate with their oversight efforts of the Epstein files,” the statement read.
After the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Justice Department earlier this year made public millions of pages of documents related to its investigations of Epstein, a well-connected financier who died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death has been ruled a suicide.
Since then, department officials have been accused by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle of missing congressionally mandated deadlines, failing to completely shield victims’ personal information and redacting details to protect prominent people in Epstein’s circle.
Bondi, in particular, has faced intense scrutiny for her handling of that rollout, and the matter played a role in Trump’s decision to remove her from her Cabinet-level post. The president had fumed for months as Epstein material continued to drive headlines and divide his party.
Bondi and her successor, acting attorney general Todd Blanche, have broadly defended the Justice Department’s work and its efforts to comply with the law in previous congressional testimony. Bondi has fielded questions about the Epstein files during at least two hearings, but members of the committee voted in March to again compel her testimony.
Several Republicans joined Democrats in that vote, which appeared to catch Comer off guard. The push was led by Reps. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) and Ro Khanna (D-California).
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