Bondi tells Congress DOJ released all Epstein files, blames Blanche for redaction failures

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act on July 15, 2025, co-authored with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) — one of the few bipartisan pairings in the 119th Congress. The bill sat in committee until Massie filed a discharge petition in September 2025, which forced a floor vote when it collected the required 218 signatures on Nov. 12, 2025, from 214 Democrats and just four Republicans. The House passed it 427–1 on Nov. 18, 2025, with Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) casting the only no vote; the Senate approved by unanimous consent the next day and Trump signed it Nov. 19.

The law required the Attorney General to publish all unclassified DOJ records related to Epstein's investigation and prosecution — including flight logs, travel records, and names of government officials — in searchable, downloadable format within 30 days. DOJ could withhold only three categories: materials jeopardizing active federal investigations, images of child sexual abuse, and information that would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. It couldn't withhold records simply because they'd embarrass a public figure — a clause that became significant when NPR reported in February 2026 that DOJ had removed files tied to allegations against Trump, including more than 50 pages of FBI interviews with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse as a minor.

The DOJ identified approximately 6 million pages as potentially responsive to the disclosure law. It made two releases: a partial disclosure of several thousand pages beginning Dec. 19, 2025, and then the main batch on Jan. 30, 2026, totaling 3.5 million pages — more than 3 million documents, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images. DOJ declared full compliance. That left roughly 2.5 million pages unreleased, which DOJ attributed to survivor privacy, active investigations, and attorney-client privilege covering about 200,000 pages.

Acting AG Todd Blanche later told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee in May 2026 that DOJ "failed" to protect victim privacy in the rollout. He said officials "never want to release a single victim's name." An attorney for more than 100 Epstein survivors reported "thousands and thousands of redaction errors," with some documents still posting survivor names and identifying information even after DOJ acknowledged the failures.

Pam Bondi served as Attorney General from Feb. 5, 2025, confirmed 54–46 by the Senate — one of the narrower Cabinet confirmations of the Trump second term. She delegated day-to-day oversight of the Epstein document review to Deputy AG Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal criminal defense attorney. Trump fired Bondi on April 2, 2026, citing frustration with her handling of the files; Blanche became acting attorney general.

After Bondi's firing, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee filed a civil contempt resolution when she initially failed to appear for a bipartisan subpoena. She eventually agreed to the May 29 transcribed interview. Republicans did not pursue contempt. The session was neither videotaped nor conducted under formal oath — conditions Republicans set after Harmeet Dhillon, the current assistant attorney general for civil rights, pre-negotiated ground rules that limited which subjects Bondi could discuss before the interview began.

Bondi's May 29 session was the second time the House Oversight Committee used a closed, unsworn, unrecorded format for an Epstein witness. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had testified under the same conditions on May 6, 2026, in a closed transcribed interview that was also not videotaped. Lutnick answered nearly 400 questions; his transcript was released by Republicans the following week.

The contrast with earlier witnesses is direct: the committee videotaped depositions of former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, and billionaire Les Wexner. Democrats noted that Comer had also released a video of President Biden's physician's closed-door testimony in a separate matter — making the decision not to video-record Bondi and Lutnick a deliberate format choice, not a logistical constraint. Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia said the Bondi session "should have been under oath, and it should be videotaped." He added that Bondi refused to answer any questions about Trump and told investigators "Acting AG Blanche was managing the entire investigation."

The redaction failures exposed survivors to continuing harm through a pattern that attorneys described as systematic. Survivors began receiving threatening contact from strangers after the Jan. 30 release. At least 31 people victimized as children had their identities exposed, according to their legal team.

A class action filed on March 27, 2026, in the Northern District of California — brought under pseudonyms as "Jane Does" by attorneys Elizabeth Kramer and Julie Erickson of Erickson Kramer Osborne and James Marsh, who has represented Epstein victims in prior litigation — alleged the DOJ "outed approximately 100 survivors" and sought at least $1,000 per survivor in damages from DOJ plus a court order requiring Google to remove the exposed information from search results and its AI summary feature. The complaint accused DOJ of making a "deliberate policy choice to prioritize rapid, large-volume disclosure over protection of Epstein survivors' privacy" and accused Google of continuing to surface the unredacted material even after DOJ removed the original files. Blanche acknowledged the failures were "horrible" but characterized them as a small percentage of the overall release.

The of Bondi's conduct has a specific institutional history. Congress has asserted the right to question attorneys general about law enforcement decisions since at least the Watergate era, when the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Nixon (1974) that doesn't shield information relevant to criminal investigations from judicial and congressional scrutiny. The Court voted 8–0 that a qualified privilege exists but can't extend to cover serious wrongdoing.

More recently, the House held Attorney General Eric Holder in both criminal and civil contempt in June 2012 over his refusal to produce documents in the Fast and Furious investigation — the first time a sitting attorney general was held in criminal contempt by Congress. The DOJ under President Obama declined to prosecute Holder. That standoff established that Congress can cite an attorney general for contempt but has limited practical tools to enforce compliance. Bondi's arrangement — where current DOJ official Harmeet Dhillon pre-negotiated the ground rules for a former AG's testimony — tracks a recurring pattern: executive branch lawyers limiting what predecessors can share about ongoing matters.

Blanche's own role became complicated when 18 Epstein survivors accused him of lying under oath during the Senate Appropriations hearing — claiming he said he had met with survivors and their lawyers when he hadn't. No perjury referral followed. Blanche, now running the department and the person Bondi named as the operational manager of the Epstein review, faced no formal Judiciary Committee questioning through May 2026.

The dynamic gave the congressional inquiry an unusual structure: the committee questioned the former attorney general about decisions she said were made by the current acting attorney general, who himself faced accusations of misrepresenting his conduct to a separate committee. Neither faced the formal accountability mechanism that sworn open testimony would provide.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, controlled the format and scope of the inquiry. Democrats said Comer had converted formal depositions into voluntary roundtables without enforcement rules. Comer said in January 2026 that the Clintons were "not above the law" — but arranged Bondi's May 29 interview without an oath requirement and without video, conditions he hadn't extended to Hillary Clinton's separate committee appearance. Democrats filed the civil contempt resolution over Bondi's initial non-appearance but couldn't force a vote without Republican support.

Comer said Republicans planned to release the Bondi transcript in the days following the interview, consistent with his release of the Lutnick transcript the previous week. Democrats said that without video, the public couldn't evaluate Bondi's demeanor or the full context of her answers — and that the format gave witnesses structural insulation from the reputational consequences of lying that a visible, oath-bound public hearing would impose.

The congressional inquiry ran alongside evidence that the Epstein files carried direct political stakes for the current administration. NPR's Feb. 24, 2026 investigation found DOJ had removed files tied not only to the Trump sexual abuse allegation but also to a key Maxwell trial witness seeking clemency from Trump. DOJ told NPR any temporary removal was because a victim or counsel had flagged the file — a rationale Democrats disputed given the pattern of the withheld materials.

Congress has no current legal mechanism to force DOJ to remove redactions from already-published files or to compel release of the remaining 2.5 million pages. The Transparency Act set the initial disclosure requirement; it didn't give courts or Congress a tool to override DOJ judgment about what qualifies as a privacy exemption.

American Oversight filed a FOIA lawsuit on May 28, 2026 — the day before Bondi's testimony — after DOJ didn't respond to underlying FOIA requests it had submitted in July 2025, a nearly ten-month silence. The suit seeks internal review protocols, communications about withheld materials, and records showing whether FBI agents were told to flag files mentioning Trump for separate review — the practice NPR had already documented in the released materials.

The survivor community had simultaneously pursued judicial remedies. Attorneys for Epstein victims asked federal judges to order a takedown of released files, citing "thousands of redaction failures." Lawyers reported that even after DOJ acknowledged errors, it took "days, or sometimes weeks, and several follow-up emails" before documents were actually removed. Bondi's May 29 appearance before the Oversight Committee was the first time she addressed any of it on the record.