Attorney General Pam Bondi must resign in wake of her behavior before House lawmakers. (Photo: U.S. Justice Dept.)
Attorney General Pam Bondi was playing to an audience of one — Donald Trump — at House Judiciary Committee hearing today, but her raucous belligerence, belittling condescension, and unresponsiveness were a national disgrace.
Her contemptible behavior, insults and stonewalling did a disservice to the once August Justice Department and confirmed every negative stereotype about the Trump administration.
The Trump administration is imploding. Pam Bondi did it no favors.
She was callous, arrogant, uncouth, imperious and unaccountable at a time when the nation is in shock over brutal federal ICE tactics, including blatant shootings, administration witch-hunts, and the mushrooming Epstein pedophile sex scandal enveloping the administration.
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Americans of all political stripes needed to hear her offer answers and reassurances about the administration’s policies, but she delivered neither.
Her loud arrogance would get her thrown out of any restaurant in America. At times during the hearing she seemed out of control, almost slavering to spit out digs from a prepared, opposition research “burn book.”
Her effort to highlight immigrant crimes in Democratic member districts was so transparently contrived and off-point, she dishonored the victims of those crimes, who she demeaned by using them as political props.
The only positive thing she had to offer at the hearing was slavish praise of Trump, the kind you’d expect from an obsequious sycophant. Someone needs to remind Bondi she’s the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, not the Trump administration.
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But that distinction was lost on her the first day she took office. She’s aggressively pursued the president’s political enemies from day one. Her attempt to indict former FBI Director James Comey, and New York Attorney General Letitia James blew up spectacularly in her face.
This week (Feb. 10), a seperate Washington D.C. federal grand jury refused to indict Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and four other House Democrats on accusations of sedition.
Bondi had to know the charges were spurious, yet took the case before a grand jury, anyway, and it resulted in another humiliating setback for Trump, who had recklessly called for the death penalty.
“Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) in a scathing rebuke.
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Indeed, the hard-right, former Florida Attorney General has never failed to carry out Trump’s political agenda. She was in the nation’s top legal job little over a week when she was thrust into the middle of a “quid pro quo” scandal involving criminal charges against New York Cith Mayor Eric Adams.
The Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District who was prosecuting Adams wrote in a scathing letter that the department’s justification for dismissing the charges were “so weak as to be transparently contextual.”
“No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy executives,” he wrote.
But those actions pale in comparison to her department’s handling of the Epstein files. Under The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law on Nov. 19, 2025, the department was broadly required to release all Epstein files in the government’s possession by Dec. 19, with minimal redactions.
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Bondi not only missed the deadline but the files have been nothing short of a mess; survivor’s names were released and the names of people who may have committed crimes were hidden. Millions have been unlawfully withheld.
The files revealed that people close to Trump – including the US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick; former strategist Steve Bannon and Elon Musk – all had closer relationships with Epstein than was previously known. None of the men has been charged with wrongdoing in connection to Epstein.
Once the Epstein files were the focus of the hearing, many of her responses were nonsensical.
“I’m not getting down in the gutter with you,” she shouted when Rep. Pramila Jayapal, (D-Wash) asked her to apologize to Epstein victims seated in the hearing room audience.
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Bondi refused.
Despite claiming to be tough on sexual predators, the victims said Bondi’s office had never reached out to them, or interviewed them about their abuse.
At another point, she screamed at Raskin when he admonished her about giving rambling answers.
“You don’t tell me anything,” she interjected. “You’re a washed-up loser lawyer. You’re not even a lawyer,” she seethed. Raskin has an undergraduate and law degree from Harvard University.
Raskin accused Bondi of “running a massive Epstein cover-up” and claimed she has acted with “staggering incompetence, cold indifference and jaded cruelty.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) questioned Bondi on overly broad redactions in the Epstein documents, and questioned the justice department credibility.
“I find it interesting that she keeps going after President Trump, the greatest president in American history,” Bondi responded.
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Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), a co-sponsor of the Epstein Act, told Reason in a podcast interview today. the “sloppiness” of the DOJ in redacting and releasing the files amounted to “criminal negligence” by Bondi.
“They’ve been utterly incompetent. Incompetent to the point that it almost seems like you’d have to be doing this on purpose to be this incompetent,” he charged.
In one of her most reckless statements, Bondi accused Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) of anti-Semitism after she called out Trump for the number of administration officials who are in the Epstein files.
“Oh! Oh, do you want to go there, attorney general? Do you want to go there? Are you serious, talking about antisemitism to a woman who lost her grandfather in the Holocaust? Really?!” Balint shot back.
Watch Bondi’s complete hearing testimony below.