Former US Attorney General Pam Bondi, during her long-awaited interview with US House lawmakers, reportedly said that Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell should die in prison and should not receive a pardon.
Maxwell was a longtime associate of Epstein, the US financier and convicted sex offender, who died by suicide in jail in 2019. She was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and conspiracy involving underage girls. She is currently serving a 20-year sentence and remains in a Texas prison facility.
Bondi made the remarks during a closed-door session on Friday. According to Democratic lawmakers, she repeatedly declined to provide substantive answers about the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files and instead pointed to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as the official overseeing the investigation. Democrats later said they were left frustrated by her testimony.
According to a CNN report, Rep. Robert Garcia said that Bondi sought to foist “blame on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche,” her one-time deputy. Lawmakers said she did not provide substantive responses, including on what President Donald Trump may have known about Epstein. Bondi later rejected suggestions that she was blaming Blanche.
“She said and I quote, ‘Acting Attorney General Blanche was managing the entire investigation,’” said Garcia, who is the top Democrat on the panel.
Ahead of the meeting, Bondi defended the department’s actions, saying it had shown an “unprecedented commitment to transparency” during her tenure.
Bondi, who left the Capitol without speaking to reporters, later used her social media account to dispute Garcia’s claims.
In an X post, she said: “NOT TRUE.” “I praised Acting AG Blanche’s management of this Herculean task. I said his ethics are beyond reproach and that he is an incredible Attorney General.”
The CNN report added that Republicans on the Oversight panel also disputed that Bondi was seeking to blame Blanche. A Justice Department official who attended Bondi’s closed-door interview, Harmeet Dhillon, said such delegation is “very common” in a large agency.
“The former Attorney General had thousands of responsibilities, and it is common for many components of her job to be delegated to other senior officials,” Dhillon was cited as saying by CNN.
Roughly two months after her firing and days after announcing her cancer diagnosis, Bondi spoke to House lawmakers about the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein probe during her tenure, which remains a major source of tension inside the White House.
Bondi’s deference to Blanche was also apparent in her prepared statement released earlier in the day, in which she appeared to defer to Blanche, saying she “delegated” parts of the document release process to him.
