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WASHINGTON —Former Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi is scheduled to meet with the House Oversight Committee on Friday to discuss the Justice Department’s investigations into deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and its release of files related to that investigation.
But the circumstances surrounding her meeting with the committee raise questions about how much the committee will actually learn about either.
For one, the former attorney general will not be under oath in a sworn deposition but will provide a transcribed interview, which is voluntary. Bondi’s interview with the committee will happen behind closed doors with members of the committee and staff and will not be filmed. The committee says it plans to release a transcript soon after the hearing.
And Bondi will be represented at her interview byAssistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, which legal experts say raises the prospects that the Department of Justice could direct Bondi to not answer some questions posed by the committee.
Former Atty. Gen. William Barr, former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all gave sworn depositions.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the committee, rejected the Clintons’ offer to provide a transcribed interview, rather than sit for a deposition, out of concern that someone giving a transcribed interview could “refuse to answer whatever questions he wanted for whatever reasons he wanted.”
California
President-elect Donald Trump named Harmeet Dhillon to lead the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Comer’s spokesperson said Bondi was allowed to sit for a transcribed interview, rather than a deposition, because the former attorney general was “cooperative.”
“Unlike the Clintons who defied subpoenas for seven months, former Attorney General Pam Bondi voluntarily and quickly cooperated with the Committee to identify a mutually agreeable date,” spokesperson Austin Hacker said in a statement.
Bondi had, in fact,refused to comply with the committee’s subpoenawhile she was still in office, and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), filed a resolution on April 29 to hold Bondi in contempt for not complying with the committee’s subpoena a month earlier. Bondi’s agreement to provide a transcribed interview was announced the same day.
The committee subpoenaed Bondi in March to learn more about the department’s long-running investigations into Epstein — the financier accused of abusing more than 1,000 women and girls and directing some of them to have sex with his high-powered friends — and the department’s release of files in response to the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated disclosure of the investigative records.
Asked whether Dhillon’s participation indicated that the department planned to invoke privilege and bar Bondi from sharing some information, the department said in a statement that Dhillon and other agency officials would attend Bondi’s interview “solely to ensure accurate representation of Department processes, facilitate any necessary clarifications, and support a complete factual record for the Committee.”
The department added that it “routinely provides staff” to assist with “congressional engagement involving past Department staff actions.”
