Former Attorney General Pam Bondi told lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee on Friday that the Justice Department made “redaction errors” in itsreleaseof records related to Jeffrey Epstein, according to a copy of her opening statement obtained by NBC News.
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Bondi told the panel during her closed-door interview on Capitol Hill that she was assured by the team that reviewed the documents that “the only materials that were withheld were either non-responsive, privileged, or duplicative,” according to the opening statement.
“To the best of my knowledge, the Department produced everything required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Our diligent and good faith effort to collect materials ensured that all potentially responsive documents that could be reasonably located would see the light of day,” she planned to say in her opening statement.
Bondi,whom Trump fired last month, said she didn’t lead every aspect of the review of the Epstein files and delegated oversight of the process to then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who now serves as acting attorney general.
“There were redaction errors,” her opening remarks said. “But since day one of this process, this Department has been committed to accountability and transparency. Our stance has always been that the Department stands ready to review any potential evidence of criminal activity related to Epstein and his associates and would pursue appropriate investigative or prosecutorial action wherever the facts and law warrant.”
During a mid-morning break in the interview, the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, said that Bondi refused to answer any questions about Trump during the interview.
“I personally asked the former AG five times in five different questions about her conversations with President Trump, whether he directed her at any given time on the Epstein files, what he knew, what he asked her to redact or not and she refused to answer any questions about President Trump. In fact, she said she would not speak to or respond to any questions having anything to do with President Trump,” Garcia said.
Garcia also criticized the fact that Harmeet Dhillon, a top DOJ official, was in the interview with Bondi.
“The DOJ is in there right now, stopping questions about President Trump and about what happened in the release of these files, and why so many survivors were doxxed, and their information, of course, released to the public,” he said.
Asked after the interview concluded if she directed Bondi not to answer questions about Trump, Dhillon told reporters that “there were ground rules laid with the committee before we walked in there, and we simply wanted to stick to those, the temporal limitations as well as subject matter limitations.”
Garcia said Bondi told the committee that Blanche is “responsible for all the mistakes we saw” in terms of how the files were handled.
Bondi pushed back against Garcia’s comments in apost on Xafter the hearing. “NOT TRUE,” she wrote. “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,” Bondi wrote.
Garcia said Democrats on the committee would push Comer to bring Blanche in for testimony and said they would try and force a subpoena if he doesn’t.
