Bondi DOJ hearing turns chaotic amid Epstein file questions (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: We've been watching a congressional hearing erupt into shouting matches. Attorney General Pam Bondi has been defiant and explosive as she fields questions from members of the House Judiciary Committee, and it's happening on multiple fronts and multiple controversies, including the Justice Department's release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. First, just watch this exchange with Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

[00:00:27] Speaker 2: It is about you taking responsibility for your Department of Justice and the harm that it has done to the survivors who are standing right behind you and are waiting for you to turn to them and apologize for what your Department of Justice has done.

[00:00:45] Speaker 3: Members get to ask the questions, the witness get to answer in the way they want to answer.

[00:00:50] Speaker 2: That's not accurate, Mr. Chairman, because she doesn't like the answer.

[00:00:53] Speaker 4: So, Mr. Chairman, I have asked Merrick Garland this.

[00:01:00] Speaker 2: I am reclaiming my time, and when I reclaim my time, it is mine.

[00:01:05] Speaker 4: I'm not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics.

[00:01:09] Speaker 1: There was also this moment when Congresswoman Jayapal asked Jeffrey Epstein survivors who are in the room to raise their hands if they haven't been able to meet with the Justice Department. Every one of them raised their hands. Bondi did acknowledge in her opening statement the victims, and she said she's deeply sorry for what they've been through and that the FBI wants to hear from them. Over the last two hours, it has been very clear that the Attorney General was speaking to an audience of one. Lots of moments like this.

[00:01:41] Speaker 4: Robert Mueller found no evidence, none, of foreign interference in 2016. Have you apologized to President Trump? Have you apologized to President Trump, all of you who participated in those impeachment hearings against Donald Trump? You all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it. I'm not going to put up with it.

[00:02:05] Speaker 5: You can let her filibuster all day long, but not on our watch, not on our time. No way. I told you about that, Attorney General, before you started.

[00:02:13] Speaker 4: You don't tell me.

[00:02:14] Speaker 5: Oh, I did tell you because we saw what you did in the Senate.

[00:02:20] Speaker 4: Within 40 minutes, you asked me a question. Within 40 minutes, Wexner's name was added back.

[00:02:27] Speaker 3: Within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed.

[00:02:30] Speaker 4: Red-handed. There was one redaction out of over 4,700, and we invited you in. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. You're a failed politician.

[00:02:45] Speaker 1: Okay. I'm joined now with our panel. I'll start with somebody who is the opposite of a washed up loser lawyer. Thank you. You're welcome. I want to get into a lot of the specifics because so much of what is bubbling up in news and controversy goes through the Justice Department right now, across the board, Epstein files, and on and on and on. But I just want to, for a second, talk about the tone and tenor of this hearing. Yes, we saw Pam Bondi do this the last time she testified. She had her list of insults that somebody caught a picture of. She knows what she feels that she needs to do so that the president sees her fighting back. She also wants to deflect on a lot of these issues where she is in the hot seat. As somebody who worked at the DOJ, your thoughts on what we've seen so far?

[00:03:39] Speaker 6: This is a fiasco. I wish I had a nicer way to put it, but this is the attorney general of the United States. This is the top law enforcement official in the country. This is the same job that was once held by Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., by Elliot Richardson, by Janet Reno. And there are vital questions that the American public needs transparency, needs substantive answers on. Instead, what do we get? Accusations of Trump derangement syndrome, name calling, you're a loser, lawyer, this and that. Coming from the AG of the United States in the U.S. Senate, did we get any meaningful clarity on the Epstein investigations, on the Epstein files, to your point? Do the victims feel, MJ, to what you were saying earlier, like they've been given any transparency, any clarity on any of this? Have we learned anything new about what DOJ is doing to investigate in Minnesota? Have we learned anything new about the search warrant in Fulton County? Have we learned anything new about the fact that dozens of judges across this country have found that this DOJ lacks credibility? No. It's been name calling. It's been amateurish. It's an embarrassment to the Justice Department, what we're seeing from Pam Bondi.

[00:04:42] Speaker 7: I mean, plus one, I guess, at some level, but from the non-lawyer, washed up or otherwise. I'm not some stuffy institutionalist. I love a good back and forth in a hearing. Pointing to Scott Besson, he's had some really great one-line retorts that he didn't have to prepare for or have his staff prepare in a very lengthy book of opposition research before his hearing. I think it's a great part of the game and lawmakers are just as guilty of this as administration officials and have been from every single Congress and administration you can think of. This is farcical and it's embarrassing. And it is also extraordinarily juvenile in the approach. And to Ellie's point, which I think is important, as we've seen kind of the congressional role in the branches of government continue to diminish year after year after year across several administrations, but in particular in the last 13 months, like this is an oversight committee of this agency. There was a moment where a Democratic lawmaker asked the AG, can you please submit this document that I'm talking about, since you want to answer questions to the committee, which the answer has to be yes. And she said, I'm not going to commit to anything because I don't like how you're answering or asking these questions. It's just should not be a plausible option for a cabinet official, period.

[00:05:54] Speaker 1: And there are so many important questions, which there's still a lot of people who are left to ask questions, including, like you said, one of the things that we've been talking about a lot on this show is the elections coming up. First of all, the fact that the DOJ released the evidence that they gave to allow for and to get permission for a search warrant in Fulton County, Georgia. There were a lot of sort of washed up, to borrow a term from Pam Bondi, conspiracy theories that were used and somehow the magistrate judge said yes. There is the lawsuit that the DOJ is involved with about 24 states to try to get really sensitive personal information from them on voters. And so these are critical issues for the American people and for the Congress to do their constitutional duty for oversight and sort of owning the libs and showing the conservatives in conservative media that you're not going to sort of answer questions of Democrats and even some Republicans. That does undermine what this is supposed to do. And look, I mean, to be fair, there are theatrics on the Democratic side too. There's theater, at least bad theater, like not getting good reviews theater across the board.

[00:07:20] Speaker 8: I think one of the most striking things to me about these hearings is they've really devolved over time. And I wonder if a member just asking a question plainly without sort of the hyperbole going into it, I don't think it would change anything for Pam Bondi in this hearing, but it does get to the whole underlying issue, which is there was a time where even if it was a Republican administration, if a Republican witness was acting that way, the Republican side of the aisle, at least someone, and not Thomas Massey in this case, because we know how he and the president feel about each other, but someone else would say, as a reminder in the course of this hearing, and that just is not happening. This is just a free for all, this is for clips, this is for the president, and obviously for the audience of one that we've been talking about.

[00:08:12] Speaker 9: It's mostly for the president, right? I mean, the number of times that she sort of unprompted brought up the president's record, the moment where she was being asked about Epstein related issues and then brought up the Dow breaking records. And I think it was a Democratic Congresswoman who just shouted into the ether, what does that have to do with any of this? She clearly is keenly aware of the audience that she most needs to win over, including on the Epstein stuff, which- Exactly.

[00:08:40] Speaker 1: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we're almost out of time, but I want to just pull something out of you, which is especially on the Epstein stuff, because there's a lot of criticism of her, the way that people believe, conservatives believe she bungled the beginning of the administration on this.

[00:08:57] Speaker 9: Right. I mean, how many times have we played the clip of her talking about this so-called client list and saying, it's sitting on my desk right now? That sort of set off this entire firestorm of controversies, and she's not been able to shake that off. And we've wondered, Todd Blanch has sort of been the main face of the DOJ when it comes to Epstein issues. Is that because she bungled it so badly initially that she couldn't be trusted to be the face of this really important and politically explosive issue?