Democrats blast Bondi for dodging House deposition

WASHINGTON (CN) — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have threatened to hold former Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress, accusing her of illegally dodging a subpoena to appear for a deposition with lawmakers on her handling of the Epstein files.

The warning comes as the ousted Justice Department head failed to appear Tuesday for a closed-door meeting with the Oversight Committee, a date initially proposed in the March 17 legal summons issued to Bondi. The Justice Department, though, has maintained that the congressional subpoena no longer applies to its former top official.

In a statement, top committee Democrat and California Representative Robert Garcia accused Bondi of “evading a lawful congressional subpoena” and argued that she is still bound by the summons “regardless” of her current title.

“She must appear before the committee, and if she continues to ignore the law, Oversight Democrats will move forward with contempt proceedings immediately,” wrote Garcia. “We will fight until there is accountability and justice.”

A spokesperson for Oversight Committee Democrats did not immediately return a request for comment about whether lawmakers were coordinating with Bondi’s legal team on a future deposition date, or how long the minority would wait before initiating contempt proceedings.

President Donald Trump earlier this month fired Bondi a little over one year into her term as attorney general. The exact reason for her removal was unclear, but some of the president’s allies had long urged him to fire her over her handling of the Justice Department publication of Jeffrey Epstein investigation documents.

Bondi’s subpoenaed deposition, part of Congress’ ongoing probe into the Epstein files, would have come weeks after she attended a controversial Capitol Hill briefing on the matter and two months after a testy hearing in the House Judiciary Committee where she clashed with Democrats and Republicans over the investigation of the convicted sex offender.

But the Justice Department has maintained that Bondi is no longer bound by the subpoena. The agency last week informed Oversight Committee chairman and Kentucky Representative James Comer that she would not appear for the deposition because she was summoned “in her capacity as attorney general.”

In a statement to Courthouse News, a spokesperson for the Oversight Committee’s Republican majority slammed the Democratic contempt threat.

“Ranking member Garcia’s outrage today is purely performative,” said the spokesperson, calling him a “hypocrite” and pointing out that Bill and Hillary Clinton, who sat for depositions in the Epstein probe in March, had “defied lawful subpoenas for seven months” before relenting under threat of contempt.

“Last week, the Department of Justice indicated that Pam Bondi would not appear for the April 14 deposition because she is no longer attorney general,” the committee spokesperson added. “We will work with her personal attorney to reschedule.”

The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment.

It’s unclear if or when Bondi might sit for a deposition with House lawmakers. But according to a source with knowledge of the matter, the Oversight Committee had not formally scheduled a closed-door meeting with the former attorney general given the Justice Department’s claim she was no longer bound by the subpoena.

Though the March subpoena set Tuesday as the date for the deposition, the source said that it did not reflect a final schedule and that both parties typically agree on a mutual date.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long pushed for Bondi to appear behind closed doors to discuss her handling of the Epstein files. In a letter to Comer last week, California Representative Ro Khanna and South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace urged the Oversight Committee chairman to “make clear” that the former attorney general was still legally required to comply with the subpoena.

“The removal of Pam Bondi as attorney general does not diminish the committee’s legitimate oversight interests in seeking her sworn testimony or the need for accountability and information about files withheld from the public by the DOJ,” said Khanna and Mace.

During her acrimonious House Judiciary Committee hearing in February, Bondi panned bipartisan scrutiny of the Epstein files as a distraction from Trump’s accomplishments during his first year in office. Though she initially led the charge in the administration’s effort to publish Justice Department documents on its Epstein investigation, the agency later said it would not make any of those files public.

The Justice Department was compelled to publish the Epstein files last fall by an act of Congress and has produced millions of documents so far.

Follow @BenjaminSWeiss