By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and STEPHEN GROVES Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday stormed out of a closed-door briefing on the Jeffrey Epstein files by Justice Department leaders, and said they would push to force Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer questions under oath about the case that has plagued the Trump administration.
Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche went to Capitol Hill to try to quell bipartisan frustration over the Justice Department’s handling of millions of files related to Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation.
But less than an hour into the briefing, Democrats walked out in protest of the arrangement and said they would press to enforce a subpoena for Bondi to appear for a sworn deposition next month. Democrats said they asked Bondi repeatedly whether she would comply with the subpoena, but she was noncommittal.
“We want her under oath because we do not trust her,” Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost told reporters.
Republicans on the committee dismissed the move by Democrats as political grandstanding. They said Bondi and Blanche answered “substantiative questions,” and noted that the attorney general said she would follow the law regarding her 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 in a social media post.
Justice Department leaders had hoped the release of documents tied to the disgraced financier would put an end to a political saga that has dogged the president’s second term, but the agency remains consumed by questions and criticism over Epstein’s case and its management of the files.
Bondi has defended the department’s handling of the files and has accused Democrats of using the furor over the documents to distract from Trump’s political successes, even though some of the most vocal criticism has come from members of the president’s own party.
The Oversight committee on Tuesday issued a subpoena for Bondi to appear for a deposition on April 14 to answer questions under oath about Epstein’s case and the investigative files. Lawmakers have accused the Justice Department of withholding too many files and criticized the agency for haphazard redactions that exposed intimate details about victims.
The Justice Department has called the subpoena “completely unnecessary,” noting that members of Congress have been invited to view unredacted files at the Justice Department and that department leaders have made themselves available to answer questions from lawmakers.
The department has sought to assure lawmakers and the public that there has been no effort to shield President Donald Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago after an earlier friendship, or any other high-profile figures close to Epstein from potential embarrassment. Justice Department leaders have also rejected suggestions that they have ignored victims and insist that while there is no evidence in the files to prosecute anyone else, they remain committed to investigating should new information come forward.
“I’m not trying to defend Epstein — I’m not,” Blanche said in an interview this week with Katie Miller, who is married to top Trump adviser Stephen 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, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Criminal investigations into the financier have long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting.
After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out. The Justice Department in January said it was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.