On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) was caught by surprise when five Republican members of his committee made it clear they wanted to haul Attorney General Pam Bondi into a hearing to explain her Jeffrey Epstein files foot-dragging.
Appearing on MS NOW on Thursday morning, Kurt Bardella, who served as the spokesperson for the committee when it was previously under Republican control, claimed that Comer was then forced to scramble.
Calling the approval of bringing Bondi in “interesting timing,“ Bardella said the chair did not see it coming.
“Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are frustrated with the redactions, with files going up, files being taken down, other media entities doing investigative work, coming up with information that the committee doesn't actually have in real time,” Bardella explained. “So frustration finally reached this boiling point.”
“And you saw yesterday a bipartisan –– I mean, this is how this is an incredibly rare thing to have right now in this highly narrow majority, that Republicans have –– a bipartisan group of members voted to subpoena the attorney general, blindsiding the chairman, James Comer, at the start of his hearing yesterday to the point where he had to kind of punt that vote to later in the day to figure out what the deal was,” he reported.
“And it ended up having five Republicans join every congressional Democrat on that committee to vote for Bondi to come and start answering questions.”
He then pointed out, “The key thing here, the most important thing about this, is it's a closed-door deposition; it's not a public hearing. She will not be able to grandstand and filibuster the way she did in the [Senate] Judiciary Committee meeting a few weeks ago. This is a time where you have unlimited amounts of time, there's no five-minute rule. There's no ‘Oh, I only have a few minutes to get my question in so you can run out the clock on me.’ It's a deposition.”