Pam Bondi will appear before the House Oversight Committee on May 29 to answer questions about her role in releasing the Epstein documents, Republicans on the panel announced Wednesday following a rapid escalation in pressure from Democrats.
The former attorney general had resisted testifying after leaving office, arguing that her subpoena applied only to her official position. But after Democrats filed contempt charges against her for defying the committee's demands, the GOP members quickly moved to schedule her deposition for late May.
Bondi was originally subpoenaed in March when five Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to compel her testimony. A deposition was set for mid-April, but the Justice Department pulled her from that appearance after Trump fired her, claiming she was no longer required to participate since she held the position when subpoenaed.
Democrats rejected that logic, noting that Bondi had been leading the department during the actual release of the Epstein files last year and therefore held critical information about the Justice Department's handling of the materials. The party's argument gained traction when Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., invoked the precedent of Hillary Clinton, who testified before the committee in closed session after appearing in photographs included in the document release.
"If we could chase Hillary Clinton, who hasn't been in office for 20 years, certainly we can get Pam Bondi to explain why she covered up documents," Khanna said on NBC's "Meet the Press" earlier this month.
The Epstein files have drawn scrutiny from multiple quarters since the Justice Department began releasing them online in December. Survivors have criticized inadequate redactions that exposed personal information, while lawmakers and media figures on the right have questioned the overall pace and transparency of the rollout.
The department's internal watchdog and the Government Accountability Office are both reviewing the Justice Department's compliance with the law that mandated the release. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the department's work this month, characterizing redaction failures as isolated incidents affecting less than 1% of documents.
Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., had driven the original legislation requiring the comprehensive release of all Epstein-related files in the agency's possession.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "The speed with which Bondi's deposition materialized once contempt charges flew suggests Democrats found their leverage, and now we'll finally hear what the former AG knows about one of the government's messiest document releases in recent memory."
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