Bondi defends DOJ’s handling of Epstein files in long-sought interview on Capitol Hill

By Sarah Ferris, Paula Reid, Camila DeChalus, CNN

(CNN) — Former Attorney General Pam Bondi offered a robust defense of the Justice Department’s handling of the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files as she arrived on Capitol Hill Friday morning for a long-sought interview with the GOP-led House Oversight Committee.

“To the best of my knowledge, the Department produced everything required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” Bondi said in a statement released just ahead of her closed-door interview with the panel. Bondi argued DOJ “demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to transparency” in its release of the case documents in recent months.

Roughly two months after her firing and just days after making public her cancer diagnosis, Bondi is speaking to Hill lawmakers about the department’s handling of the Epstein probe under her watch — a major source of contention inside Donald Trump’s White House during her tenure.

In one key glimpse of her comments to lawmakers, Bondi used her prepared statement to distance herself from at least some of the document release process and noted that she “delegated” some of that work to now-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“As the head of a large Department with broad responsibilities, I did not lead every aspect of this effort or conduct that document review myself. I delegated oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,” Bondi said.

Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, stressed to reporters Friday morning that his committee is “taking this investigation seriously” as it holds the 13th interview in its probe into the late convicted sex offender.

“We want to get the truth to the American people, we wanted to try to provide justice for the survivors,” he told reporters.

But ahead of the sitdown with Bondi, Comer’s Democratic counterpart on the panel, Rep. Robert Garcia, lashed out at Republicans for not requiring the former attorney general to speak on camera or to take a formal oath before speaking to the panel.

While Bondi’s interview will be transcribed and made public, Garcia said it “should have been under oath, and it should be videotaped.”

Just ahead of Bondi’s appearance, a group of Epstein survivors spoke to reporters about the significance of her interview — and what they saw as a clear need for more information.

Marina Lacerda, one of those survivors, said she believes Bondi knows details about the investigation that the public doesn’t. “We all hope that today Pam Bondi will be as clear as possible and hopefully bring accountability to the table,” she said.

Some 2.5 million documents in the Justice Department’s investigative files related to the late convicted sex offender have not been publicly released and many of the 3.5 million pages that have been published are heavily redacted, prompting questions about what’s being kept from the public.

During her time as the top US law enforcement official, Bondi faced criticism from both parties over her lack of transparency on the Epstein investigation.

She’s also faced scrutiny over redaction errors that, in some cases, exposed private personal information about the survivors in the documents.

Another survivor who spoke to reporters Friday, Liz Stein, said she wants Bondi to answer for those redaction errors — and to disclose if anyone has been held accountable for revealing survivor names “while protecting the names of perpetrators.”

“I would certainly hope that as a career attorney and as the former head of the Department of Justice for the United States of America that she will have some kind of moral reckoning with her conscience and remember why she was put in the job she was in, and what her responsibilities in that job are to the American people and not necessarily any particular administration,” Stein said.

In March, the oversight panel, with several GOP lawmakers joining Democrats, voted to subpoena Bondi. Looking to boost members’ confidence in how the investigation was being handled, she then voluntarily appeared for an informal meeting with lawmakers — but Democrats walked out of that meeting because she would not commit to testifying under oath.

Bondi was then set to appear for a sworn deposition in April, but she was fired from her role as attorney general before the scheduled sit-down – prompting the department to argue against her scheduled appearance. Furious Democrats threatened to hold her in contempt of Congress. She is now appearing voluntarily before the committee.

Bondi has been at the center of the Trump administration’s political crisis on Epstein from the start.

Shortly after taking office, Bondi appeared to side with the many MAGA loyalists pursuing full transparency of the government’s handling of the Epstein files. She famously told Fox News that Epstein’s long-rumored client list was “sitting on my desk right now.”

But she later walked back her remarks and her department offered no new details on Epstein, infuriating the MAGA base. That lack of transparency helped fuel a GOP revolt inside Congress, led by Rep. Thomas Massie and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which ultimately forced Trump and Republican leaders to fast-track DOJ’s release of a sprawling web of Epstein files.

Still, some Republicans and many Democrats have insisted the DOJ has slow-walked the release — or withheld other details altogether.

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CNN’s Kaanita Iyer, Casey Gannon, Dugald McConnell and Annie Grayer contributed to this report.