U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi attends a oversight listening to of Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 7, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday stonewalled a question at a Senate Judiciary Committee about who ordered FBI agents to flag any documents that talked about President Donald Trump throughout a overview this yr of investigative files about the late intercourse predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Sen. Dick Durbin, in a letter in July, talked about that purported order to FBI brokers as he requested the Justice Department about previous guarantees to launch the Epstein files and a subsequent resolution by Bondi not to take action.
“So, who gave the order to flag records related to President Trump?” Durbin, D-Ill., requested Bondi at Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee listening to.
“To flag records which included his name?” Durbin requested.
Boni bristled as she answered, “I’m not going to discuss anything about that with you, senator.”
Durbin replied, “Eventually you’re going to have to answer for your conduct in this, you won’t do it today, but eventually you will.”
Durbin, in his letter to the Justice Department, stated that in March, a whole lot of personnel in the New York discipline workplace of the FBI had been assigned to overview files associated to Epstein.
In that letter, Durbin cited a quote by Trump in 2002 about Epstein, which was revealed in New York journal.
“Mr. Trump said of Mr. Epstein, ‘I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy, He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,’ ” Durbin wrote.
Durbin on Tuesday additionally requested Bondi why, in February, she had stated that the so-called Epstein shopper listing was sitting on her desk for her to overview, when she ultimately stated she wouldn’t launch the Epstein files.
“I said I had not yet reviewed it, and if you see our memo on Epstein, you will see our memo on Epstein clearly points out that there was no client list,” Bondi replied.
That joint Justice Department and FBI memo was launched on July 7, months after the overview of Epstein file paperwork.
It concluded that there was no Epstein shopper listing, and supported the long-standing official discovering that Epstein died by suicide in a federal jail in Manhattan in 2019, weeks after being arrested on child sex trafficking charges.
The Trump administration, for months, has confronted criticism, together with by some Republican allies in Congress, for its reneging on guarantees by Bondi and FBI officers to launch the Epstein files.
Some supporters of Trump have refused to imagine there was no Epstein shopper listing, which they think was a listing of highly effective or rich males who had sexual contact with ladies and younger girls underneath his management, making these males weak to blackmail or different stress.
Trump had been mates with Epstein and his affiliate Ghislaine Maxwell for years earlier than the 2 males fell out in the mid-2000s.
Maxwell was convicted in 2022 at a federal trial in New York of fees associated to procuring and grooming underage ladies for Epstein to sexually abuse. She was sentenced to twenty years in jail.
On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to listen to Maxwell’s attraction of that conviction.