Pam Bondi Blames Todd Blanche as Epstein Files Linger

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi told members of Congress that acting Justice Department head Todd Blanche was managing the Epstein-related investigation and files, rejecting questions about her own role. The exchange came during a House Oversight Committee h

For years, the question has been whether the Justice Department handled the Jeffrey Epstein case with full transparency—or whether crucial details were delayed, buried, and then parcelled out only when pressure became unavoidable.

On Friday, that fight resurfaced on Capitol Hill, and it did so with a name Bondi kept returning to: Todd Blanche.

Bondi—no longer the country’s top cop after being ousted from her job—came to the House Oversight Committee as a bipartisan subpoena forced her back into the spotlight. Democrats immediately framed the hearing as the latest step in a broader cover-up. They said Justice Department lawyers blocked Bondi from answering certain questions. and they complained the meeting was structured as a transcribed interview rather than a sworn. videotaped deposition.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) told reporters, “This is absolutely a cover-up and a smokescreen to prevent Pam Bondi from having to testify under oath pursuant to a congressional subpoena.”

Bondi, in turn, repeatedly pointed lawmakers to Blanche when questions turned to Epstein-related shortcomings. According to Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.). Bondi told lawmakers. “Acting AG Blanche was managing the entire investigation.” When asked about what she knew or did. Bondi also said. “Talk with Todd Blanche. I don’t know anything about it,” a line Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said she repeated.

The hearing was not happening in a vacuum. It came after Democrats charged that the Justice Department’s handling of Epstein files remained a matter of concealment even as Congress demanded access.

Earlier, Bondi’s own rise and fall in the second Trump administration had been tightly tied to the Epstein story. Early in her tenure, Bondi declared that she had Epstein’s mythical “client list” on her desk. Last summer. the Justice Department said no such list existed and that it would release no further material from its past prosecution of Epstein. who was a former friend of Trump’s and who killed himself in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.

That stonewalling ignited fury among Trump supporters who expected the administration to release the Epstein files. The House Oversight Committee then pushed hard for documents, issuing a bipartisan subpoena, and Congress passed a law requiring their release.

The Justice Department dragged its feet, but it ultimately uploaded thousands of documents to a searchable online database.

In a written opening statement Friday, Bondi insisted the fight had already reached its end point. “The bottom line is: Justice and transparency in this matter have been delivered at the direction of President Trump and his administration,” she said.

Still, some records remained missing, and those gaps fed fresh anger. Bondi acknowledged that some Epstein documents were held back. including FBI interview notes with a woman who claimed Trump sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s after Epstein introduced them—an allegation that has not been substantiated.

The dispute didn’t stop at what was withheld. It also turned to what was released and what was missed. After journalists pointed out that some records were listed on an index of evidence in the trial of Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. the Justice Department released some—but not all—of the records.

The hearing also returned to a separate, high-profile move involving Maxwell. Bondi told lawmakers she had nothing to do with Maxwell’s transfer to a lower-security prison camp last year.

That transfer came after Maxwell sat for an unusual transcribed interview with Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal attorney. During that interview, Maxwell said she never witnessed improper behavior by Trump when he was in Epstein’s company.

Rep. Garcia said the questions at issue followed a clear chain. “We asked questions about Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer, and again [Bondi] referred those questions to Todd Blanche and the Bureau of Prisons,” he said.

The thrust of Bondi’s testimony left lawmakers with a sharper map of responsibility: if investigators and decision-makers were all under the umbrella of Blanche. then Bondi’s repeated claims of ignorance meant that the hardest questions about Epstein still pointed in the same direction—toward the acting Justice Department head currently running the process.

And for Democrats, that didn’t resolve anything. They came to the hearing arguing the structure itself was meant to limit what could be forced into the record under oath. For their part, Bondi framed it differently, saying the release and transparency were already delivered under President Trump’s direction.

But as the hearing unfolded, the sticking point stayed the same: the public still doesn’t have the full picture of what was held back, what was delayed, and who was in charge when key decisions were made—only that, when Bondi was pressed, she kept steering the conversation to Todd Blanche.

Pam Bondi Todd Blanche Jeffrey Epstein House Oversight Committee Justice Department Ghislaine Maxwell FBI interview notes client list searchable database congressional subpoena federal transparency