Bondi defends DOJ’s handling of Epstein files but says Blanche was in charge
By Sarah Ferris, Paula Reid, Camila DeChalus, CNN
(CNN) — Former Attorney General Pam Bondi remained tight-lipped about the Justice Department’s handling of the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files in a long-sought interview with Hill lawmakers, Democrats said on Friday, repeatedly noting that her successor – Todd Blanche – was largely in charge.
In a statement ahead of her Capitol Hill sit-down, Bondi offered a robust defense of the department’s release of those files, arguing that the DOJ “demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to transparency” during her tenure. Inside the room, however, Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee insist that Bondi offered no substantive answers to their questions — including how much President Donald Trump himself knew about Epstein’s crimes at the time. Instead, Rep. Robert Garcia said Bondi sought to foist “blame on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche,” her one-time deputy.
“She said and I quote, ‘Acting Attorney General Blanche was managing the entire investigation,’” said Garcia, the top Democrat on the panel.
Bondi, who left the Capitol without speaking to reporters, used her social media account to fiercely dispute Garcia’s claims that she sought to blame Blanche.
“NOT TRUE,” Bondi wrote on X. “I praised Acting AG Blanche’s management of this Herculean task. I said his ethics are beyond reproach and that he is an incredible Attorney General.”
Republicans with the oversight panel also disputed that Bondi was seeking to blame Blanche, according to one person familiar with the discussions. CNN has reached out to Blanche for comment.
A DOJ official who attended Bondi’s closed-door interview, Harmeet Dhillon, told reporters that such delegation of tasks was “very common” for a high-ranking leader at a sprawling agency.
“The former Attorney General had thousands of responsibilities, and it is common for many components of her job to be delegated to other senior officials,” Dhillon said.
Democrats also accused Bondi of stonewalling their questions about the investigation and refusing to answer any questions about Trump — noting that Dhillon, the DOJ official sitting beside her, had “stopped Ms. Bondi multiple times from answering questions,” according to Garcia. At one point, asked specifically about Trump’s awareness of Epstein crimes, she told Democrats, “I’m not certain to the extent of his knowledge,” according to Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw.
“It’s a sham in there,” Democratic Rep. Dave Min told reporters.
Dhillon, however, said she was simply intervening to ensure that lawmakers stuck to the “ground rules” set by the committee, on both the format and subject matter. Asked about Democrats’ complaints that it was inappropriate for the DOJ to be representing Bondi after she was ousted, Dhillon was dismissive: “That is silly. That is for her to consider, and she clearly didn’t see it as such.”
Roughly two months after her firing and just days after making public her cancer diagnosis, Bondi spoke to Hill lawmakers about the department’s handling of the Epstein probe under her watch — a major source of contention inside Trump’s White House during her tenure.
Bondi’s deference to Blanche was also apparent in her prepared statement released earlier in the day, where she appeared to distance herself from at least some of the document release process and noted that she “delegated” some of that work to the now-acting attorney general.
“As the head of a large Department with broad responsibilities, I did not lead every aspect of this effort or conduct that document review myself. I delegated oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,” Bondi said.
Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, stressed to reporters Friday morning that his committee is “taking this investigation seriously” as it holds the 13th interview in its probe into the late convicted sex offender.
“We want to get the truth to the American people, we wanted to try to provide justice for the survivors,” he told reporters before the sit-down. He did not speak to reporters afterward about Bondi’s remarks.
Republicans now plan to release the transcript of that interview in the coming days. But Garcia, Comer’s Democratic counterpart on the panel, lashed out at Republicans for not requiring the former attorney general to speak on camera or to take a formal oath before speaking to the panel.
Garcia said the interview “should have been under oath, and it should be videotaped.” (Republicans point out that similar voluntary sit-downs with other high-profile figures, such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, were also not taped.)
Just ahead of Bondi’s appearance, a group of Epstein survivors spoke to reporters about the significance of her interview — and what they saw as a clear need for more information.
Marina Lacerda, one of those survivors, said she believes Bondi knows details about the investigation that the public doesn’t. “We all hope that today Pam Bondi will be as clear as possible and hopefully bring accountability to the table,” she said.
Some 2.5 million documents in the Justice Department’s investigative files related to the late convicted sex offender have not been publicly released and many of the 3.5 million pages that have been published are heavily redacted, prompting questions about what’s being kept from the public.
During her time as the top US law enforcement official, Bondi faced criticism from both parties over her lack of transparency on the Epstein investigation.
She’s also faced scrutiny over redaction errors that, in some cases, exposed private personal information about the survivors in the documents.
Another survivor who spoke to reporters Friday, Liz Stein, said she wants Bondi to answer for those redaction errors — and to disclose if anyone has been held accountable for revealing survivor names “while protecting the names of perpetrators.”
“I would certainly hope that as a career attorney and as the former head of the Department of Justice for the United States of America that she will have some kind of moral reckoning with her conscience and remember why she was put in the job she was in, and what her responsibilities in that job are to the American people and not necessarily any particular administration,” Stein said.
In March, the oversight panel, with several GOP lawmakers joining Democrats, voted to subpoena Bondi. Looking to boost members’ confidence in how the investigation was being handled, she then voluntarily appeared for an informal meeting with lawmakers — but Democrats walked out of that meeting because she would not commit to testifying under oath.
Bondi was then set to appear for a sworn deposition in April, but she was fired from her role as attorney general before the scheduled sit-down – prompting the department to argue against her scheduled appearance. Furious Democrats threatened to hold her in contempt of Congress. She is now appearing voluntarily before the committee.
Bondi has been at the center of the Trump administration’s political crisis on Epstein from the start.
Shortly after taking office, Bondi appeared to side with the many MAGA loyalists pursuing full transparency of the government’s handling of the Epstein files. She famously told Fox News that Epstein’s long-rumored client list was “sitting on my desk right now.”
But she later walked back her remarks and her department offered no new details on Epstein, infuriating the MAGA base. That lack of transparency helped fuel a GOP revolt inside Congress, led by Rep. Thomas Massie and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which ultimately forced Trump and Republican leaders to fast-track DOJ’s release of a sprawling web of Epstein files.
Still, some Republicans and many Democrats have insisted the DOJ has slow-walked the release — or withheld other details altogether.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Kaanita Iyer, Casey Gannon, Dugald McConnell and Annie Grayer contributed to this report.
