Pam Bondi’s “sneering” performance before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday prompted the editors of the New York Times editorial board to lambast the attorney general on Saturday morning.
In a brutal editorial, the editors went far beyond Bondi's abrasive refusal to answer questions, choosing instead to respond to legitimate questions with personal attacks and complaints, to how the Department of Justice under her watch has done nothing but botch— perhaps intentionally — the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Worse still, they noted, was her treatment of Epstein’s victims, some of whom sat in the gallery, where they watched her ignore their plight during a nationally televised hearing.
“Ms. Bondi’s performance was more than just political theater. It was a final indignity in a process that has victimized Mr. Epstein’s victims all over again,” they wrote. “Under the guise of transparency, the Justice Department has managed to expose the victims to further humiliation while shielding the powerful behind a wall of redactions.”
Making their case, the editors noted, “The department’s release of these files has been dominated by incompetence. Ms. Bondi has long had the authority to make them public, but she spent months refusing and yielded only after Congress forced her hand,” adding, “Instead, in a grotesque failure, the D.O.J. uploaded dozens of unredacted images to its website, including nude photographs of young women and possibly teenagers.”
That led Epstein survivor Annie Farmer to point out it is “hard to imagine a more egregious way of not protecting victims,” and the editors to add, “Ms. Bondi’s department shattered the trust of women who had already been betrayed by the legal system once before.”
“Ms. Bondi’s refusal to look the survivors in the eye was symbolic of a broader failure,” the editors pointed out before dropping the hammer with: “The Department of Justice had an opportunity to finally prioritize the women who were preyed upon by Mr. Epstein and his circle. Instead, through a combination of malice and incompetence, it has done the opposite. It has stripped the victims of their privacy while wrapping perpetrators in a cloak of state secrecy.”
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