WASHINGTON — Lawyer Common Pam Bondi went on offense Tuesday as Senate Democrats grilled her about the Jeffrey Epstein case and different issues — with Bondi at one level suggesting Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island may be “involved” about embarassing hyperlinks to the late pedophile.
Bondi sought to show the tables on Whitehouse and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-In poor health.) throughout a Senate Judiciary Committee listening to after dealing with months of criticism over her July 6 memo recommending towards additional public disclosures within the infamous intercourse trafficker’s case.
“What number of of these Treasury [Suspicious Activity Reports] did you or [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel examine?” Whitehouse requested Bondi about transactions made by Epstein that had been flagged by banks.
The lawyer basic snapped again: “Senator, I’m unsure for those who’re involved since you took cash — I imagine, did you? — from [LinkedIn co-founder] Reid Hoffman, one in every of Epstein’s closest confidants, not solely as soon as, however twice in 2018 and 2024.”
She added: “Did you ask [former Attorney General] Merrick Garland any of this during the last 4 years when he sat earlier than you?”
Whitehouse plowed on: “There’s been public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein confirmed folks photographs of President Trump with half-naked younger girls. Have you learnt if the FBI discovered these pictures of their search of Jeffrey Epstein’s protected or premises or in any other case?”
Bondi blasted him once more: “, Senator Whitehouse, you sit right here and make salacious remarks, as soon as once more making an attempt to slander President Trump left and proper — while you’re the one who was taking cash from one in every of Epstein’s closest confidants … and the senator sitting proper subsequent to you [Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois] tried to dam the flight logs from being launched.”
When Durbin spoke, Bondi identified that in 2023 the committee’s prime Democrat blocked an try by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to pressure the disclosure of Epstein’s flight logs.
“Why was the July 7 memo unsigned?” Durbin requested.
Bondi retorted: “Why did you struggle to not disclose the flight logs, Senator Durbin?”
“I didn’t refuse,” he claimed. “One of many senators right here wished to supply these logs, and I requested her to place it in writing, and she or he by no means did.”
“ that I submitted that in writing,” Blackburn reduce in, “and also you proceed to misrepresent that, and I’m not going to let that report stand.”
Later, when Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) requested Bondi about numerous company mergers, she denounced him as “somebody who lied about being within the army simply be to a senator” and jabbed: “I can not imagine that you’d accuse me of impropriety while you lied about your army service.”
Elsewhere, when Whitehouse requested about what occurred to $50,000 in money that went to Tom Homan as a part of an FBI sting operation final yr, Bondi replied: “Senator, I’d be extra involved if I had been you, while you discuss corruption and cash, while you push for laws that will subsidize your spouse’s firm.”
The Rhode Island Democrat scoffed on the suggestion of malfeasance involving his spouse’s receipt of practically $2.7 million from the federally funded Ocean Conservancy, calling it “utterly irrelevant far-right web speaking factors.”
President Trump has tried to maneuver on from the Epstein controversy, calling it a Democratic “hoax” designed to smear him for his socializing with the disgraced financier within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s.
A bipartisan cohort in Congress has continued to hunt extra details about Epstein’s hyperlinks to highly effective males comparable to former President Invoice Clinton, Prince Andrew, former Harvard President Larry Summers and Microsoft chief Invoice Gates — with subpoenas and ensuing public disclosures by the Republican-led Home Oversight Committee.
The Senate Judiciary Committee listening to was wide-ranging, protecting subjects together with Trump’s crime-focused deployment of federal brokers and the Nationwide Guard to main cities and the just-reported FBI surveillance of eight Republican senators, in addition to the results of the partial authorities shutdown on federal employee paychecks.
