Members of the House Oversight Committee indicated that they still expect Pam Bondi, who was ousted from her role as U.S. attorney general on Thursday, to testify later this month on the Department of Justice’s botched rollout of files related to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The calls transcended party lines, with Republican Rep. Nancy Mace joining her Democratic colleagues to insist that the subpoena still stands, whether Bondi has a role at the department or not.
“My subpoena still stands. When the Oversight Committee moved to subpoena Bondi, I did it by name, not by or not as the sitting Attorney General of the U.S.,” Mace, who introduced the resolution to subpoena Bondi, posted on X.
“RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES,” she added.
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Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the committee, also wants to still see Bondi testify on April 14.
“Pam Bondi and Donald Trump may think her firing gets her out of testifying to the Oversight Committee,” Garcia posted on X. “They are wrong - and we look forward to hearing from her under oath.”
Garcia also released a statement on the Oversight Dems X account.
“Attorney General Pam Bondi has been leading a White House cover-up of the Epstein files,” Garcia wrote. “She has weaponized the Department of Justice to protect Donald Trump and put survivors in harm’s way by exposing their identities.”
Other members of the committee made similar statements, with Democratic Reps. Maxwell Frost and Ro Khanna both demanding they still see Bondi in the hearing room despite her recent firing.
It remains unclear whether the Oversight Committee will follow through with its members’ requests to keep the Bondi interview on the books. Rep. James Comer, the panel’s chair, was noncommittal on Thursday about keeping the hearing following Bondi’s ouster.
“Since Pam Bondi is no longer Attorney General, Chairman Comer will speak with Republican members and the Department of Justice about the status of the deposition subpoena and confer on next steps,” a spokesperson for Comer, who voted against the subpoena, told multiple outlets.
The committee voted 24-19 to subpoena Bondi over the Epstein files on March 4, after frustration with the slow release of files, which did not meet the original deadline set by the Epstein Files Transparency Act that became law in November.
The first batch of files was released Dec. 19, with the DOJ saying it would miss the law’s deadline and instead release several more batches over the following month.
The latest batch came out Jan. 30, and many documents from the files remain unreleased.
Some lawmakers, such as Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie, took it upon themselves to visit the DOJ to look at unredacted files to get more answers.
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