Bipartisan push to take down Pam Bondi gains steam in Congress
Bondi has been Trump’s go-to for months now. But now her tenure may be over quicker than many thought.
Because a bipartisan push to take down Pam Bondi gains steam in Congress.
Bipartisan Push for Contempt
In a rare cross-party alliance, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) declared on Sunday that the House ought to cite Attorney General Pam Bondi for “inherent contempt” due to the Justice Department’s delivery of a partial and extensively blacked-out set of Jeffrey Epstein-related records on Friday.
During a joint appearance on CBS News’s Face the Nation, the legislators sharply criticized Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, coming just days after the DOJ disclosed materials on the deceased s*x trafficker, fulfilling obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act—a bill they jointly sponsored.
“The quickest way, and I think most expeditious way, to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi,” Massie told host Margaret Brennan.
The Republican from Kentucky revealed that he and Khanna are preparing a resolution to hold Bondi in inherent contempt, as the Democrat from California explained that it would impose fines on Bondi “for every day that she’s not releasing these documents.”
“Pam Bondi is breaking the law,” Khanna said.
“And this is the corrupt system, the Epstein class that people are sick of. So, I believe we’re going to get bipartisan support in holding her accountable, and a committee of Congress should determine whether these redactions are justified or not.”
DOJ’s Partial Disclosure and Missing Files
The Justice Department informed Congress via a Friday letter, as reported by The Hill, that it was making public “hundreds of thousands” of pages to meet the requirements of the near-unanimously passed law, which President Trump enacted last month.
However, numerous pages featured heavy blackouts, and more than a dozen items—including an image depicting Trump—vanished from the DOJ’s online repository by Saturday. Additionally, the agency published a 119-page record of grand jury proceedings from Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 trial, Epstein’s partner in crime.
Khanna took issue with the DOJ’s approach of blacking out non-victim names in that transcript during his Sunday remarks. In a post on X announcing plans with Massie to pursue inherent contempt against Bondi, the progressive congressman described their efforts as “action to fight a corrupt system.”
Defense from the Deputy AG
Todd Blanche, Trump’s ex-personal lawyer who managed the Friday disclosure, stated on Fox News this week that the DOJ plans to unveil “several hundred thousand more” pages soon.
On NBC News Sunday, he clarified that pulling certain images from the database “has nothing to do” with Trump, attributing it instead to worries voiced by Epstein and Maxwell victims regarding the exposure of their images.
