Feb. 11 (UPI) — Victims of Jeffrey Epstein watched as Attorney General Pam Bondi told lawmakers they should focus on the stock market during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Bondi sparred with several Democratic lawmakers during the hearing over questions about the investigation into the late Epstein and his alleged co-conspirators in a massive sex trafficking ring. She said the Epstein files were a distraction from the accomplishments of President Donald Trump, who is named in the files.
“The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000 and the Nasdaq smashing records,” Bondi said. “Americans’ 401Ks and retirements are booming. That’s what we should be talking about.”
This response came after Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., asked Bondi how many of Epstein’s co-conspirators she has indicted or is investigating. Crosstalk continued between Nadler and Bondi as Nadler requested to reclaim his time.
Ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., called on committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to restore 45 seconds to Nadler’s time. This sparked Bondi to call Raskin, a Harvard Law School graduate, a “loser lawyer.”
“You acted with some mixture of staggering incompetence, cold indifference and jaded cruelty toward more than 1,000 victims raped, abused and trafficked,” Raskin told Bondi in his opening statement. “This performance screams coverup.”
While Democrats drew much of Bondi’s ire, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie also pressed the attorney general over the redactions in the files that have been released. Many of the redactions covered up the names of potential co-conspirators while leaving the names of victims apparent.
“To my right is an email sent by the victims’ lawyers to the DOJ. It was a list of names not to release,” Massie said. “What did the DOJ do with this email? They released this email in the document production. Literally the worst thing you could do to the survivors, you did.”
Several victims of Epstein are in attendance for the hearing.
“Are you able to track who in your organization made this massive failure and released the victims names?” Massie said. “Are you able to track who it was that obscured Les Wexner’s name as a co-conspirator in an FBI document? Do you have that kind of accountability?”
Bondi acknowledged that Wexner’s name was mentioned more than 4,000 times, to which Massie responded “Yeah, I already told you that.” Bondi continued that the Justice Department fixed mentions of Wexner, a billionaire retail mogul, within 40 minutes.
“Within 40 minutes of me catching you red handed,” Massie said.
Bondi later said of releasing the names of victims,”We did the best we could.” She added that the department will release the names of those who should not have been redacted and will redact the names that were not meant to be released. This was in response to Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, calling the release of the names of victims “troubling.”
Massie highlighted that the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law passed overwhelmingly by Congress to procure the release of the files, requires the Justice Department to release all unclassified records and investigative materials in a searchable and downloadable format. He and other lawmakers say the department failed to meet the requirements of this law, including missing its Dec. 19 deadline.