Under the fluorescent glare of a congressional hearing room, Attorney General Pam Bondi spent Wednesday morning performing the particular genre of evasive tap-dance now required of anyone running the Trump Justice Department (DOJ).
Lawmakers were there to ask about — among other heinous things — the Epstein files. Bondi was there to talk as if she were on cable news and engage in a light piece of performance art.
In the audience were several Epstein victims. At one point, those survivors of sexual abuse stood up and identified themselves. It was a particularly painful back-and-forth: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) asked the Epstein victims to stand if they were comfortable. They did. She then asked them to raise their hands if they’d been unable to meet with Bondi’s DOJ, and every one of them did so.
Asked whether she’d like to apologize for such an oversight, Bondi then started talking over Jayapal, repeatedly saying that she should ask Biden’s AG, Merrick Garland, instead. She never once glanced back at the victims and eventually ended up at: “I’m not gonna get in the gutter for [Jayapal’s] theatrics.” The Epstein victims remained unacknowledged.
Even for Bondi, this was an eye-opening performance.
“The Dow is over $50,000!” she yelled at one point, before adding, after the shocked laughter of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), “I don’t know why you’re laughing! You’re a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin… That’s what we should be talking about!”
Indeed, indeed, that is what we should be talking about. Sure, we could ask about emails that describe children — possibly as young as nine years old — being sexually abused on a secret pedophile island visited frequently by international elites. Emails that say things like “loved the torture video”. Emails that should have been released long ago, that the president promised to release as soon as he came into power, and that for some reason he just… didn’t, until they started appearing anyway, still heavily redacted. But why not instead discuss EMAILS ABOUT HOW MY SHARES IN BOEING ARE UP, AMIRITE, PAM?!
At one point during the hearing, exasperated by the fact that Bondi wouldn’t even directly answer a question about whether it’s important to protect the identities of sexual assault victims, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said, “You do a kind of Jekyll and Hyde routine over here.” Bondi immediately tried to drag him into a back-and-forth about what Jekyll and Hyde “means” (I’m going to charitably assume here that she is aware of the book) and we never really got to the bottom of anything else.
And so it went on. Quizzed about the handling of Epstein files, about immigration raids, about the arrests and detentions of US citizens and children and the presence of federal agents on the streets, Bondi remained, confusingly, aggrieved. She hit back at questioners, asking why they hadn’t asked the same things of Merrick Garland when he was in power. She refused to answer even basic “yes” or “no” questions, instead insisting that she’d “said it all before.”
It became clear, very quickly, that this was another exercise in protecting the legacy of Donald Trump. The victims were just another inconvenient fact. Everything was a potential threat to presidential legacy, even things that happened decades ago on a different island, even if they happened to the American citizens whom Bondi has sworn to protect and represent.
Bondi is one of my least favorite characters in the America Goes to Hell tragicomedy — and yes, there are so many to choose from: puppy-killer-turned-ICE apologist Kristi Noem, still in her job while breastfeeding babies are ripped from their mothers’ arms; JD Vance, whose standout moments include a novel about why poor people deserve to be poor and that time he said he hoped his Hindu wife would come to Jesus; Karoline Leavitt, who abruptly ended a press conference this week rather than answer a question about commerce secretary Howard Lutnick’s ties with Jeffrey Epstein; Stephen Miller, whose passing resemblance to Voldemort was neatly complemented by calling slain intensive care nurse Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist.”
So in many ways, it seems foolish to feel let down by Bondi’s performance. She’s never given us much cause to believe she’s a crusader for justice, job title notwithstanding.
Her background, too, is pretty much what you’d expect from this administration: a $25,000 political donation made to her from Trump’s foundation, illegally routed through a charity. Lobbying work for private prisons, the government of Qatar, Amazon, and Uber. Defence for Trump during his first impeachment trial. An unforgettable appearance alongside Rudy Giuliani at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Company, there to deny the results of the 2020 election.
But there’s something so confronting about watching her refuse to crack now, after what we’ve all seen in the Epstein files. The insistent sticking to the script, the eye-rolling, the irritated and exasperated sighs: they come together to form such a calcified apathy that it can’t be chipped away at even by the most stomach-churning of horrors. We are, ultimately, talking about children. Vulnerable children, used as playthings for old, rich men across the entire political spectrum and elsewhere besides.
Bondi had a chance to rise to the occasion today. She holds one of the most important jobs in the United States, possibly the most important in the context of the Epstein files. Instead, when asked whether Trump — who was shown in a video partying with Epstein — had been in attendance at any parties with underage girls, she answered, “This is so ridiculous. They are trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done.”
Who is “they”? Is it the Democrats? The victims? The wider public, who won’t stop talking about the whole global pedophile thing, since it seems like kind of a big deal, all things considered?
Really, it doesn’t matter. Because Bondi has already decided that the whole “Epstein files” issue is just like everything else: us versus them, Dow-loving patriots versus stick-in-the-mud, Antifa-card-carrying domestic terrorists. And she made it very clear today: she’ll continue to be aggrieved on behalf of the people who really deserve her sympathy.
Nandy hits out at briefings ‘dripping with misogyny’ as Labour rift deepens - latest
Nancy Mace tells Piers Morgan he’d be ‘shocked’ by names in the Epstein files
Pam Bondi pushes back at lawmakers while dodging Epstein questions during hearing
Canada’s strict gun laws include a ban on assault-style firearms
One Tech Tip: All you need to know about the iPhone's Lockdown Mode
Trump receives trophy as he’s named ‘Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal’
