Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday walked out of a closed-door briefing by Justice Department leaders about the Jeffrey Epstein files and said they will push to force Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer questions under oath about the case that has shadowed the Trump administration.
Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on Capitol Hill to try to ease bipartisan frustration over the department’s handling of millions of files tied to Epstein’s sex-trafficking investigation. Less than an hour into the briefing, Democrats left in protest and said they would seek to enforce a subpoena requiring Bondi to give a sworn deposition next month. Lawmakers said Bondi was noncommittal when repeatedly asked whether she would comply with the subpoena.
“We want her under oath because we do not trust her,” Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost told reporters.
Republicans on the committee called the Democrats’ exit political grandstanding, saying Bondi and Blanche answered “substantive questions” and noting the attorney general said she would follow the law regarding the subpoena. “It’s clear Democrats don’t want answers or justice for survivors; they just want theatrics for their latest partisan stunt,” the Republican-led committee said on social media.
Justice Department leaders had hoped the release of documents related to the disgraced financier would end a political saga dogging the president’s second term, but the agency remains the subject of questions and criticism over its handling of the files. Bondi defended the department’s work and accused Democrats of using the controversy to distract from President Trump’s political gains, even as some of the most vocal criticism has come from members of his own party.
The Oversight Committee earlier issued a subpoena for Bondi to appear for a deposition on April 14 to answer questions about Epstein’s case and the investigative files. Lawmakers accused the department of withholding too many records and criticized careless redactions that exposed intimate details about victims.
The Justice Department called the subpoena “completely unnecessary,” noting members of Congress have been invited to view unredacted files at the department and leaders have made themselves available. The department has sought to assure lawmakers and the public there was no effort to shield Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago, or other high-profile figures from scrutiny.
Justice officials have also rejected claims they ignored victims, saying there is no evidence in the files to prosecute additional people now but that investigators remain prepared to act on new information. “I’m not trying to defend Epstein — I’m not,” Blanche said in an interview this week with Katie Miller. “I do defend the work that this department is doing today, right now, which is going after every single perpetrator anyway, and if there is a narrative that exists that we are ignoring Epstein victims, that is false.”
The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed after months of pressure to open government files on Epstein and his onetime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell. After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress, the department said it deployed hundreds of lawyers to review records for necessary redactions. In January, the Justice Department said it was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and about 180,000 images.
