U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice have been openly violating a federal law for two and a half months to shield President Donald Trump from transparency in the metastasizing "Epstein files" scandal.

And now Bondi will get a second chance at explaining herself in Congress. But based on her last performance before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in February, expect only more pathetic theatrics and zero acceptance of accountability.

Still, something has shifted since Bondi rolled into that Feb. 11 House hearing with pre-printed, dimwitted insults for the Democrats who wanted to know why so many documents from the Epstein files – especially ones naming Trump – have been withheld from public release or deleted from the DOJ's website soon after being released.

Republicans largely backed Bondi after her last hearing, even after the attorney general inadvertently revealed that her department was secretly tracking what members of Congress searched for when given private access to unredacted Epstein files.

Now, five Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee joined all of the Democrats on March 4 to vote 24-19 to subpoena Bondi to explain why she has been "instrumental in orchestrating the White House's cover-up of the Epstein files."

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina who has pushed for the release of the Epstein Files, said in a social media post the committee wants "to know why the DOJ is more focused on shielding the powerful than delivering justice."

It looks like Bondi will finally face some tough questions from members of her own political party about how she has botched the release of the Epstein files. And that's long overdue.

Bondi has to answer for botched Epstein files release. Finally.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky who cosponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, was the only member of his party who challenged the attorney general in the Feb. 11 hearing. Massie later mocked Bondi's performance on social media and then did news interviews to criticize her.

Bondi made herself an easy target for critics in that hearing. Her testimony was all about defending Trump while dodging questions about the Epstein files. At one point, she declared that the Dow Jones Industrial Average "is over 50,000 right now" and "that's what we should be talking about."

The Dow Jones is now below 48,000. By Bondi's logic – if you dare to call it that – we're now free again to talk about the Epstein files.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed in the House and Senate in November with all Democrats in support and just one Republican voting against it. That was 427 votes to 1.

And Trump, who desperately tried to defeat the legislation, reluctantly signed it into law while insisting the files were some sort of hoax, a show of disrespect to the women who accused Epstein of abuse and are still calling for justice.

The law set a Dec. 19 deadline for the DOJ to release the documents compiled during investigations into Trump's former friend, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in federal prison in 2019 during Trump's first term while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The files also cover the crimes of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime accomplice, who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence while Trump openly muses about pardoning her.

The law called for transparency. But the DOJ has released only about half of the 6 million documents in the Epstein files. And Bondi insisted in a February letter to Congress, just three days after her disastrous Judiciary Committee stunt, that all the Epstein files had been released.

Clearly, the job is not done, if the job is following the law. Or maybe the job is done, if the only job is protecting Trump.

Bondi and the DOJ are here for a cover-up, not justice

Media outlets for weeks have been scrutinizing the Epstein files as they trickled out in batches, well past the Dec. 19 deadline. Some documents that mentioned or pictured Trump vanished from the DOJ website after journalists viewed them.

On Feb. 26, the Justice Department said that it would investigate whether it improperly withheld or deleted files, including FBI interview summaries of a woman who told agents in 2019 that Trump had sexually assaulted her when she was a minor.

The Wall Street Journal on March 3 reported that the DOJ had withheld more than 40,000 documents from the Epstein files, including that woman's unverified allegations against Trump. A spokesperson told The Journal that 47,635 files were taken offline and that the department was conducting a review.

The Department of Justice on March 5 told USA TODAY that it was restoring about 50,000 documents that had been removed from its website, after media scrutiny drew attention to matter.

On March 6, DOJ released FBI interviews with the woman, whose accusations the White House called “completely baseless.”

Let's state the obvious point here: A government agency credibly accused of running a cover-up to protect the president can't credibly review the behavior of the people accused of running the cover-up.

Bondi proved that recently when, in response to a growing tide of ethics complaints filed with state bar associations against DOJ lawyers, she proposed a way to stall independent investigations into that behavior. She offered a new federal regulation that would suspend bar association probes until the DOJ first investigated a complaint, with no timeline for how long that could take.

Bondi's not in the justice business. She's in the cover-up business. And if protecting Trump requires tossing a childish tantrum in Congress or using government regulation to hide bad behavior, that's exactly what she's going to do.

And that's exactly what the House Oversight Committee members – Republicans and Democrats – should question her about. Plow through her theatrics to disrupt her cover-ups.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.

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