JAKARTA - US Attorney General Pam Bondi has taken a stand against the harsh criticism expressed against the US Department of Justice (DOJ) which handled the case of sex predator Jeffrey Epstein and dragged the name of US President Donald Trump.
Bondi made the remarks during a hearing of a question-and-answer session with members of Congress on the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, February 11 local time.
During the hearing, Bondi was peppered with questions about how the US Justice Department complied with a law requiring the release of Epstein's case files last year in full with limited redactions.
Since releasing the Epstein case documents after the statutory deadline, the Department of Justice has come under intense scrutiny for releasing the names of survivors and making unexplained edits to the names of people who may have been involved in Epstein's crimes.
However, Bondi avoided answering questions from US Congress members about how the department handled the file.
Even when pressured by congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, a representative from Washington, Bondi also refused to turn from his chair to apologize to Epstein's victims who were present in the courtroom.
"I will not interfere in dirty things with this woman. She is just acting," Bondi said in response to Pramila.
Bondi also had a heated argument with Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the leading Democrat on the committee. That's because Raskin tried to prevent the attorney general from using long and verbose answers to spend five minutes of the time given to members to ask questions.
When Raskin said he had warned Bondi about spending time at the start of the hearing, Bondi replied by shouting: "You didn't tell me anything."
"You're a loser lawyer who's run out of his glory days. You're not even a lawyer," Bondi continued to Raskin.
In the release of Epstein documents, the US Department of Justice often edits or deletes the documents of the sex predator case from the department's website, even the edited data is recorded as deleted.
Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, urged Bondi to explain the editing of Epstein's documents. He also said the justice department had lost its credibility.
However, Bondi aggressively changed the topic by praising Trump.
The US attorney general and Justice Department typically keep a distance from the sitting president and the White House to avoid perceptions of political interference in law enforcement - a norm that has been shattered in the Trump leadership.
"I feel that he continues to attack President Trump, the greatest president in American history," Bondi said.
"If they can keep their composure, this is not a circus, this is a trial. In my opinion, it is interesting that he continues to attack Donald Trump, but he does not mention how much money he received from Reid Hoffman," continued Bondi.
Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, is known to have said that he knew Epstein because of fundraising for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and only met him professionally six times.
Files in the Jeffrey Epstein sex-predator case reveal that people close to Trump - including US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick; former strategist Steve Bannon; and Elon Musk - had much closer ties to Epstein than previously known. None of these people were charged in connection with the Epstein case.
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