For all the fire and fury from Pam Bondi's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee this week, it all boiled down to one clear revelation: The U.S. attorney general has zero interest in the concepts that are supposed to be at the heart of her job. That is the conclusion of MS NOW's (formerly MSNBC) Michael Steele, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Under the headline "Pam Bondi's testimony on the Epstein files revealed one key thing: The attorney general isn't interested in truth or justice," Steele writes:
If Pam Bondi’s goal when testifying before Congress on Wednesday was to put to rest the controversy over her department’s mishandling of the Epstein files, she failed badly.
But if the attorney general just wanted to impress Donald Trump, she probably succeeded.
In more than five hours of testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Bondi defended the president, personally insulted lawmakers and literally kept her back turned on survivors of Epstein’s abuse.
But here’s the thing: The attorney general is not the president’s personal consigliere, and the Department of Justice is not his personal law firm. Bondi works for the American people, and that role carries a fundamental obligation: to pursue justice.
In this case, that would mean finding out the full truth about what happened to the girls and young women who were trafficked on Epstein’s island and the powerful men who participated in his depredations.
Instead, Bondi repeatedly criticized the administrations of Joe Biden and prior presidents for their handling of Epstein. She accused Democrats of focusing on the files to distract from Trump’s criminal justice agenda and in one bizarre instance even cited the performance of the stock market to defend the president.
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Legal Schnauzer's take:
The disrespect Bondi showed toward the survivors is a takeaway decent Americans should keep in their hearts as the 2026 mid-term elections draw near. Not only did Bondi show she has neither the temperament, intellect, nor integrity to hold any public position -- after all, she was the Florida AG who did nothing to hold Epstein accountable to begin with -- she proved she is an empty show dog for the dysfunctional postmodern Republican Party, the one that is taking apart our rule of law piece by piece. (A video, from USA TODAY, of Bondi refusing Pramila Jayapal's request that she turn and apologize to Epstein victims behind her can be viewed at the top of this post.)
The GOP's first mistake regarding Trump's nomination of Bondi as U.S. attorney general was its utter failure to conduct a serious investigation of her background and credentials. Bondi was confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 54-46, with every Republican (and Democrat John Fetterman) voting in favor. That was a gross capitulation of the Senate's oversight authority, a trend that has continued to this day in the Trump II era. The Senate's failure is particularly galling because there was no shortage of evidence that Bondi was going to be a puppet for Trump. Our coverage here at Legal Schnauzer, dating to 2016, addressed those issues. (See here, here, here, and here.)
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In short, a one-man blog -- based in Alabama at the time -- could see the Trump-Bondi relationship showed signs of being pock-marked with corruption and could spell big trouble for justice in the U.S. So why couldn't Republicans see it -- and why couldn't other everyday Americans see it? (Note; In my view, GOPers and their MAGA brethren didn't want to see it. I think many regular Americans did see it. But count me among the folks who are not convinced the 2024 election was fairly and lawfully conducted. With Elon Musk paying voters in Pennsylvania (and other states), and with Musk's ties to Russia, voting technology, and mountains of cash, there are ample reasons to suspect the election was the product of fraud -- meaning Trump is not now the lawful president of the United States.
We have written extensively about a Pennsylvania-based election-security expert and technology developer named Stephen Spoonamore, who has done his best to show that the 2024 presidential election showed signs of being hacked, and Kamala Harris likely was the real winner. But Harris, for reasons that baffle me, has proven unwilling to help unearth the truth, so we are left with the madness and horror of Trump II -- and his detestable attorney general.
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Speaking of Pam Bondi, let's return to Michael Steele and his thoughts on her testimony before Congress this week. From MS NOW:
More from Michael Steele:
At one point, Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal asked Epstein survivors seated in the hearing room to stand and raise their hands if they had not yet met with the Justice Department. All 11 raised their hands.
Jayapal then asked Bondi to turn to the survivors and apologize. In the most appalling moment of the hearing, Bondi refused.
If there is justice in the world, the photograph of Bondi looking straight ahead as a row of women raises their hands behind her will haunt her for the rest of her career.
The exchanges grew sharper. When Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman asked whether Bondi would commit to publicly releasing an unredacted Epstein email so Americans could understand the extent of Trump’s relationship with Epstein, Bondi sidestepped and instead attacked Goldman's role in Trump’s first impeachment. At another point, she called Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin a “washed-up loser lawyer.”
Through it all, the central question persisted: What responsibility does the Justice Department have toward the victims of Jeffrey Epstein?
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Steele's take on that question is a sad reflection of democracy's frail state in 2026. If the public does not revolt and demand elites get to the ugly, horrifying truth at the heart of the Epstein case, the "Great American Experiment" likely will be over. It seems clear at this point there will be no top-down solution to our current mess. That means we must have a bottom-up, grassroots effort -- but it isn't clear that will happen. It is clear, after this week's testimony, that Pam Bondi will do everything in her power to make sure that doesn't happen. Let's return to Michael Steele, as he takes a closer look at a penetrating question: What does the DOJ owe the Epstein victims, who Bondi treated so dismissively on Wednesday.
More from Michael Steele:
Bondi never truly engaged that question. She did not face the survivors. She did not apologize. She did not signal that their pain, their stories or their demand for transparency would guide the department’s next steps.
And that is what she revealed under oath.
She revealed a department more animated by partisan defense than by moral clarity. She revealed an instinct to protect power rather than pursue truth and justice. She revealed that, in this moment, loyalty appears to carry more weight than accountability.
The survivors were not abstractions. They were in the room. The files are not some historical documents. They are evidence of very recent crimes. And the questions are not political theater. They are demands for answers.
If the attorney general will not turn around and face the victims standing behind her, the American people must face what that means about the Trump administration.
The Epstein files are not going away. Neither is the demand for justice.
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