Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) sparred with Attorney General Pam Bondi during a highly contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. The confrontation included Bondi attacking Massie as a “failed politician” after he grilled her on DOJ redactions in the Epstein files.
Massie began his questioning by pointing out that the DOJ redacted the name of a man who sent Epstein a “torture video.” Earlier in the week, Massie pushed the DOJ to unredact the names of six men he said appeared to be “incriminated” in the Epstein files, including the case of Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, CEO of Dubai Ports World, who sent Epstein the “torture video.”
Massie began by asking the following series of questions, “These are the documents that we need that you’re holding on to and over-redacting because they have the names of the men who are implicated. How do we know? Because the survivors gave testimony to the FBI and it’s in there. And what happens when you go to the portal at the DOJ to look at what’s behind this redaction? Another redaction. So we can’t even see them. And then there’s some of these files you’ve pulled down from the website that we will never see, because we can’t search the redactions. So I have several questions for you. Who’s responsible? Are you able to track who in your organization made this massive failure and released the victims’ names? Are you able to track who it was that obscured Les Wexner’s name as a co-conspirator in an FBI document? Do you have that kind of accountability?”
Bondi replied, “I believe Wexner’s name was listed more than 4,000 times. About, I had—”
Massie cut in, “Yeah, I already told you that. This is where he’s listed as a co-conspirator.”
Bondi shot back, “Come on, let me finish my answer. We corrected that within 40 minutes. He was already—you’re acting like everybody’s trying to cover up Wexner’s name.”
Massie jumped back in, “Reclaiming, reclaiming my time” as the two shouted over each other.
As Massie tried to move on Bondi demanded, “Chairman, may I give my answer on that? This is a political joke, and I need to give my answer on it.”
Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) replied, “We’ll let the Attorney General respond and then the gentleman can move to his next question.”
Bondi continued, “Within 40 minutes—you asked me a question—within 40 minutes, Wexner’s name was added back.”
Massie replied, “Within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed!”
Bondi replied, “Red-handed? There was one redaction out of over 4,700 and we invited you in. This guy has Trump Derangement Syndrome. He needs to get—you’re a failed politician!”
After shouting over each other, Massie then said, “I want you to watch the video.”
A clip of FBI Director Kash Patel then played, in which Patel said, “There is no credible information, none. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals.”
“Is that your position as well?” Massie pressed.
Bondi replied, “My position is any victim who comes forward, of course, we would love to hear from them. 1-800-CALL-FBI. Did you ask Merrick Garland that the last four years? Did you talk about Epstein—”
Massie shot back, “I am reclaiming my time. I’m glad you’re asking about Merrick Garland because this is bigger than Watergate. This goes over four administrations. You don’t have to go back to Biden. Let’s go back to Obama. Let’s go back to George Bush. This cover-up spans decades, and you are responsible for this portion of it.”
After more shouting over each other, Massie asked, “I want to know at what point did the FBI and the DOJ decide that Les Wexner was not a co-conspirator, because our Epstein Files Transparency Act requires you—please put it back on the screen—to release the internal decision about whether to prosecute him or not, and it’s not in the files and it is not in files for any of these other men—
Bondi eventually replied, shifting to a different topic, “And he’s a hypocrite because he voted against the ban that we were talking about on deepfake AI porn. Only two people voted against it, and you were one of them, hypocrite.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
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