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6 Big Questions for Pam Bondi on Epstein and ICE

12 0
06.02.2026

At last week’s White House Cabinet meeting, Donald Trump called on an expected array of his most influential agency chiefs: Treasury, Health and Human Services, Housing. The president even dug down a layer and gave mic time to second-tier bosses from Agriculture (“That sounds amazing,” opined Secretary Brooke Rollins about steel tariffs), Small Business (“You’ve ended at least eight wars, okay?” gushed administrator Kelly Loeffler), and Commerce (two days after the meeting, newly disclosed emails revealed that Secretary Howard Lutnick, who previously claimed to have cut ties with Jeffrey Epstein in 2005, sought to visit Epstein’s island in 2012).

Yet through it all, Trump paid no mind to the person who sat directly across from him: the attorney general of the United States, Pam Bondi. Even with weighty Justice-relevant issues exploding across the country, Bondi sat silently through the entire 80-minute meeting. The next day, DOJ called a press conference to address the Epstein files, Minnesota, and other pressing matters; out to the podium walked deputy attorney general Todd Blanche without Bondi. Two days later, Blanche hit the Sunday-morning talk-show scene — while the AG was, again, nowhere to be seen.

But Bondi can’t hide (and be hidden) forever. Next week, the attorney general will testify before the House Judiciary Committee. Here are six questions she needs to answer.

1.

It seemed until just recently that we had a clear “yes” on this one. In mid-November, Trump posted a demand on social media, addressed directly to Bondi, to investigate “Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions” for their connections to Epstein. Less than four hours later, the attorney general publicly responded that she had opened the requested inquiry and assigned it to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. “As with all matters, the department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people,” Bondi reassured the public. Urgency and integrity and deliver answers — sounded great.

But last weekend, when CNN’s Dana Bash asked whether DOJ was investigating anybody........

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