A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Attorney General Pam Bondi's appearance before Congress on Wednesday turned into a shouting match with lawmakers.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The hearing, in theory, was going to focus on oversight of the Justice Department. Instead, Bondi insulted lawmakers and ducked questions about documents relating to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In a moment, we'll speak with one of the Democratic lawmakers, Pramila Jayapal. First, we get the facts.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Carrie Johnson followed the hearing. Carrie, I mean, even for Congress, this one was a doozy.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Definitely not business as usual. There was a lot of hostility. Pam Bondi came into this House judiciary hearing prepared to attack Democrats on the panel when they tried to ask her about the messy rollout of the Epstein files and other controversies at the Justice Department. Congressman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, he wanted to know whether anyone else who worked with Jeffrey Epstein would be prosecuted. Here's a taste of how that went.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PAM BONDI: I find it...
JERRY NADLER: How many have you indicted?
BONDI: Excuse me. I'm going to answer the question.
NADLER: Answer my question.
BONDI: No. I'm going to answer the question the way I want to answer the question.
NADLER: No.
BONDI: Your theatrics are ridiculous.
NADLER: You're going to answer the question the way I asked it.
BONDI: Chairman...
JOHNSON: The congressman never got an answer about whether anyone else might be under investigation. And the attorney general called other lawmakers on the panel washed-up and bad lawyers, and on it went for hours.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, it sure did. Several Epstein survivors, though, who had been trafficked by him were in the hearing room. Did the attorney general react to them or acknowledge them in any way?
JOHNSON: At one point, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington asked Pam Bondi to turn around and apologize to some of the victims in the room for how they were treated by the Justice Department. In its release of some 3 million pages, some of those people's identities and nude images appeared in public on the DOJ website. Bondi responded by accusing the congresswoman who asked the question of engaging in gutter politics, and she also defended her record in law enforcement.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BONDI: I have spent my entire career fighting for victims, and I will continue to do so. I am deeply sorry for what any victim - any victim - has been through, especially as a result of that monster.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. What about Republicans on the panel when they had their chance to interact with the attorney general?
JOHNSON: They asked Pam Bondi about the enormous drop in violent crime across the country. They praised the Trump administration for tough immigration enforcement, and they gave her some time to respond to some of the harsher questions from Democrats. The only Republican on the panel who pushed back on the attorney general is Thomas Massie of Kentucky. He sponsored that law to release the Epstein files, and he says the DOJ effort has been a massive failure because it seems like prosecutors continue to black out the names of men who behaved badly. Massie told the AG this is a cover-up that spans decades, and she's responsible for part of it.
MARTÍNEZ: You know, the DOJ is really at the center of so many different controversies, including a lot of efforts to prosecute President Trump's political foes. I'm wondering if that came up at all in the hearing.
JOHNSON: It really did. Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, he sees a pattern here. Here's Raskin at the hearing.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMIE RASKIN: You've turned the people's Department of Justice into Trump's instrument of revenge. Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time.
JOHNSON: Remember, just this week, prosecutors tried and failed to get a grand jury to indict Democratic lawmakers who made a video telling American service members to follow their oaths and the law. DOJ has also brought cases against the former FBI director Jim Comey and New York Attorney General Tish James. Both those cases have been dismissed, but DOJ continues to investigate Trump's perceived political foes.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thanks.
JOHNSON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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