“Could those who have yet to meet with the Department of Justice please raise your hands?” Jayapal inquired.
Every survivor present lifted their hand.
“Will you now address them and apologize for what your Department of Justice subjected them to with the unacceptable release of the Epstein files and their personal information?” Jayapal pressed Bondi.
Bondi did not turn to the victims and declined to offer an apology.
“Why didn’t she pose this question to Merrick Garland when he was in my position?” Bondi responded, referencing her predecessor from the Biden administration.
“I refuse to stoop to her level for theatrics,” she added.
But she did express her sympathies for victims of sexual assault.
“I am deeply sorry for what any victim has been through, especially as a result of that monster,” she said.
The tense congressional testimony was marked by combative answers directed at Democrats on the panel.
At one point, she described Congressman Jamie Raskin as a “washed-up, loser lawyer”.
“Have you apologised to President Trump?” Bondi asked of Democrats.
“You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it.”
She criticised the committee for not talking about the stock market.
“The Dow is over 50,000 right now, the S&P at almost 7000, and the NASDAQ smashing records, Americans’ 401(k)s and retirement savings are booming,” she said.
“That’s what we should be talking about.”
Democrats were highly critical of Bondi’s testimony.
“Pam Bondi’s place in history is going to be as the attorney-general who is one of the greatest defenders of paedophiles and sexual abusers in American history,” Jason Crow said.
“Her place in history will also be as the person that turned America’s Justice Department into a political hatchet operation for Donald Trump’s opponents.”
It also appears Bondi and the Department of Justice have been surveilling representatives as they conduct their own investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
A photographer during the hearing snapped a picture of a piece of paper in a folder in Bondi’s hands.
The document is titled: “Jayapal Pramila Search History”.
The file appears to include details from the Epstein files.
This week, members of Congress were allowed to view unredacted documents in the Epstein files.
“It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files,” Jayapal later said.
“Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched.”
Epstein used his wealth and power to sexually abuse many underage girls.
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