The Latest: Epstein files hearing gets heated as Congress faults Bondi’s meandering answers

Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing questions from lawmakers over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein that have exposed sensitive private information about victims despite redaction efforts.

Bondi is confronting a new wave of criticism stemming from the political saga that has dogged her term after the release of millions of additional Epstein disclosures that victims have slammed as sloppy and incomplete.

It’s the first time the attorney general has appeared before Congress since a tumultuous hearing in October in which she repeatedly deflected questions and countered Democrats’ criticism of her actions with her own political attacks.

The hearing comes days after some lawmakers visited a Justice Department office to look through unredacted versions of the files. As part of an arrangement with the Justice Department, lawmakers were given access to the over 3 million released files in a reading room with four computers and were allowed to take handwritten notes.

Here's the latest:

Bondi sidestepped questions from Democratic Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon about whether the administration is maintaining a secret “enemies list.”

“I’m not going to commit to anything to you because you won’t let me answer questions,” Bondi told Scanlon in a heated exchanged.

Scanlon was pressing Bondi over whether the Justice Department has given Trump and top White House aide Stephen Miller a list of targeted groups and individuals the president’s September 2025 order for his administration to crack down on backers of what it described as “left-wing terrorism.”

Bondi tried to shift the question to the antifa movement before Scanlon repeated that she wanted a “yes or no” answer.

“We will comply with the law in all matters,” Bondi said.

Scanlon compared Trump’s order to McCarthyism during the early years of the Cold War and the “enemies list” compiled by Richard Nixon’s White House.

Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing some of the toughest questioning from Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky lawmaker who broke with his party to advance the legislation that forced the released of the case files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Massie took Bondi to task for the release of victims’ personal information, telling her, “Literally the worse thing you could do to survivors, you did.”

He also questioned her why more men seemingly connected to Epstein’s abuse are not under investigation.

Bondi responded in the way she has to most Democrats who brought up the Epstein files, by shooting back that he was only focused on the files because President Donald Trump is mentioned in them.

She accused Massie of having “Trump-derangement syndrome” and called him a “hypocrite.”

Democratic Rep. Lou Correa asked a handful of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse who are attending Attorney General Pam Bondi’s hearing to stand and raise their hand if they felt that the Department of Justice would support them.

None raised their hand.

Correa underscored the importance of law enforcement supporting victims and making sure they are heard as they seek justice.

Bondi responded to Correa’s point by saying she wanted victims to come forward.

“We want to work with them,” she said.

She was responding to an old video of Trump and Epstein at a party together by saying it was “ridiculous” for Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu to ask her whether she would investigate Trump’s connections to Epstein.

“They are trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done,” Bondi exclaimed.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell has been discharged from the hospital after checking himself in a week ago with flu-like symptoms.

A spokesperson for the former Senate Republican leader said McConnell is “feeling better” and will work from home the rest of the week as the Senate is in session.

McConnell’s office did not give any further details on the reasons for his hospital stay.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, complained to Bondi that the Trump administration’s Justice Department had declined to bring criminal charges over death threats against him and his family and other Democrats.

Bondi said she could reassure Swalwell that such threats are being taken seriously and are the subject of active investigations.

She told members of the committee that none of them should ever feel threatened and said anyone who felt that way should feel empowered to come to her office.

Republican Rep. Scott Fitzgerald handed Attorney General Pam Bondi an alley-oop of a questioning session by playing a video of past comments from top Democrats stating their opposition to illegal immigration.

Bondi used the opportunity to praise President Trump’s handling of illegal immigration.

“President Trump closed our borders on day one,” she said, arguing that it protected Americans from violent crime and illegal drugs.

Asked by Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, if former CIA Director John Brennan was going to be indicted in connection with the years-old Trump-Russia investigation, Bondi declined to confirm or deny that he was under investigation.

But, she added: “No one is above the law.”

Brennan’s lawyers disclosed in a letter made public in December that they’ve been informed Brennan is a target of an investigation in Florida. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Bondi at one point went on a wide-ranging, animated, minutes-long defense of Trump in which she portrayed herself as the president’s chief protector and strayed far beyond her actual job as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.

“You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it and I am not going to put up with it,” Bondi shouted during an extended speech that even praised the president for a recently surging Dow Jones Industrial Average.

She painted the president as a victim of baseless impeachments and investigations, incorrectly stating at one point that former special counsel Robert Mueller had not found foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Around 11 a.m. ET, a vehicle with Israeli flags drove along West Executive Avenue, which separates the White House from the neighboring Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Netanyahu is staying at Blair House, located across the street from the White House where foreign leaders often stay.

Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren used her time to highlight several emails released in the case files on Jeffrey Epstein that seem to refer to others being involved in the abuse of underage girls and asked Attorney General Pam Bondi whether she would open investigations.

“We will look and investigate any case, involving any victim,” Bondi responded, adding, “We will look into anything.”

But Bondi quickly raised her tone and volume as she accused Lofgren of filibustering her allotted time for questioning.

Democratic lawmakers and the public are demanding follow-up investigations into a number of individuals who were connected to Epstein, but the FBI last year released a memo saying no one else would be charged. Also, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records shows investigators found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat, excoriated Bondi over a haphazard redaction that withheld the names of “powerful predators” but exposed private and intimate details about victims and also included nude photographs.

“Your department has shown a pattern of redacting the names of powerful predators,” reading from an email involving a withheld name and referencing a “torture video.”

She asked victims of Epstein’s abuse to raise their hand if they had been unable to meet with the Justice Department.

“For the record,” Jayapal said, “every single survivor has raised their hand.”

Jayapal asked Bondi if she would apologize to the victims, prompting a fiery back-and-forth with raised voices in which the attorney general demanded to know why the congresswoman had not asked her predecessor, Merrick Garland, the same question.

“I’m not going to get in the gutter with this woman,” Bondi said.

The attorney general addressed the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse during the House Judiciary Committee, saying she was “deeply sorry” for what they had suffered.

Bondi has been severely criticized by survivors of Epstein’s abuse, including several who were in attendance at the committee hearing Wednesday, for failing to redact personal information, including nude photos, of victims in the release of over 3.5 million case files on Epstein.

Bondi did not explicitly apologize for that failure, but said the Justice Department has taken down files when they were made aware that they included victims’ information and that staff had tried to do “our very best in the time frame allotted by the legislation” mandating the release of the files.

“Any accusations of criminal wrongdoing will be taken seriously and investigated,” the attorney general added.

After a little less than a year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is ending the work of a task force she created to look at big changes to America’s intelligence community.

The panel known as the Director’s Initiative Group was formed in April and charged with rooting out what Gabbard called the politicization of intelligence gathering. The group also studied ways to reduce spending on intelligence and whether reports on high-profile topics like COVID-19 should be declassified.

In announcing the end of the group’s work in a statement Wednesday, Gabbard said it was always intended to be a temporary effort as she began her work coordinating the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies.

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee lambasted Attorney General Pam Bondi for her leadership of the Justice Department.

“Grand juries of American citizens have repeatedly rejected your vendettas and baseless indictments brought by the hacks left at DOJ,” Raskin said.

He also criticized her for pursuing the president’s retribution campaign, replacing experienced prosecutors with what he said were weaponized “stooges” willing to do Trump’s bidding instead of actual justice.

“Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza and you deliver every time,” he said.

She opened the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in a packed room at the Capitol with a defense of how she’s “keeping America safe.”

“Crime is declining, this did not happen by accident,” she said, pointing to declining rates of violent crimes.

Bondi is facing questioning from Congress as the Justice Department faces scrutiny, mostly from Democrats, on multiple fronts: how it is handling the investigations of two fatal shootings in Minneapolis by federal officers; how it has handled the mandated release of case files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; and the department’s investigation of lawmakers who produced a video urging U.S. military members not to follow “illegal orders.”

The committee chair, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, praised how Bondi has implemented President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Meanwhile, the top Democrat on the Judiciary committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, opened his portion of the hearing by introducing several survivors of Epstein’s abuse who are in the committee room.

Mexican defense and navy secretaries will meet with Northern Command officials in Washington on Wednesday in a meeting attended by several other countries, said Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in her morning news conference. Sheinbaum said the Mexican officials would “listen” in the meeting.

“They are not taking any position other than the one we already know, which is the defense of sovereignty,” she said. “We will inform you in due course.”

She noted that Mexican Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch, who has spearheaded her government’s strategy to combat cartels, will also meet with American security officials Thursday.

The meetings are part of ongoing security talks between the two governments.

The vice president cited his foreign travel for not being aware of calls for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to resign after acknowledging meetings with Jeffrey Epstein.

“I’ve been pretty occupied the last couple of days,” Vance told reporters Wednesday in Azerbaijan.

Lutnick told lawmakers Tuesday that he’d met with Epstein twice after the late financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a child. Lutnick previously said he’d cut ties with Epstein after 2005.

Vance used the question to attack Democrats.

“Certainly, you had a lot of very wealthy and powerful people who are involved in some very disgusting behavior,” Vance said, throwing out former President Bill Clinton’s name at one point. “But I do find it’s interesting that the congressional Democrats are so focused on attacking” Trump with “completely unsubstantiated attacks” about his Epstein association.

Trump deserves credit for the redacted Epstein case files being publicly available, Vance said.

Vance seemed to downplay the now-deleted video while also distancing himself from the controversy and making clear that Trump owes no further explanation or apology.

“It was one of those things where, either because the time zone changed or because we were so busy, the controversy had started and then died out by the time I even paid attention to it,” Vance told reporters in Azerbaijan.

He was traveling last week, too, when Trump posted the video that included former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama depicted as jungle primates.

Vance said the U.S. should focus on “real” problems.

Pressed multiple times on whether Trump should apologize for a video that even many Republicans criticized as racist, the vice president said no.

“I think people post things on social media, and if you post something you don’t like it, you can just take it down,” he said.

But he also said it “happens every Olympics.”

Vance stopped short of echoing President Trump’s assessment that administration critics on the U.S. team are hard to cheer for.

“My advice to them would be to try to bring the country together. And when you’re representing the country, you’re representing Democrats and Republicans,” Vance said Wednesday in Azerbaijan. “You’re there to play a sport, and you’re there to represent your country and hopefully win a medal.”

U.S. skier Hunter Hess drew Trump’s ire when he said being an Olympian “doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.” Trump called Hess “a real loser.”

Vance argued that “when Olympic athletes enter the political arena, they should expect some pushback.”

The vice president attended Milan’s opening ceremonies and has continued traveling in Europe and Asia.

The Federal Aviation Administration reopened the airspace around El Paso International Airport in Texas on Wednesday morning, just hours after it announced a 10-day closure that would have grounded all flights to and from the airport.

The FAA said in a social media post that it has lifted the temporary closure of the airspace over El Paso, saying there was no threat to commercial aviation and that all flights will resume.

A Trump administration official told The Associated Press that the airspace over El Paso was closed after Mexican cartel drones breached the airspace, but that the Defense Department took action to disable the drones.

Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Department have determined there is no threat to commercial travel, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a national security issue.

The official did not say how many drones were involved or what specifically was done to disable them.

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— Darlene Superville

NATO on Wednesday launched a new military effort dubbed Arctic Sentry aimed at improving security in the High North, a month after President Trump ramped up tensions within the alliance over his threats to annex Greenland.

Initially, Arctic Sentry will be the NATO label for national military exercises in the region, such as Denmark’s Arctic Endurance — which angered Trump so much that he threatened to slap tariffs on allies taking part — and Norway’s Cold Response drills. Arctic Sentry doesn’t involve the permanent or even long-term deployment of troops to the region under a NATO banner.

NATO’s role in this series of military activities, which will be coordinated through its U.S. headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, is aimed at countering Russian and Chinese influence in the High North, which includes Greenland.

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe — U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich — said that “Arctic Sentry underscores the alliance’s commitment to safeguard its members and maintain stability in one of the world’s most strategically significant and environmentally challenging areas.”

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The North Carolina senator said the justice system is “the gold standard of the world” and that “thankfully” a grand jury in Washington declined Tuesday to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video urging U.S. military members to resist “illegal orders.”

“A jury saw the attempted indictments for what they really were,” Tillis wrote on social media. “Political lawfare is not normal, not acceptable, and needs to stop.”

The retiring senator has grown increasingly critical of the Trump administration since announcing he won’t run for reelection this year.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries says “justice prevailed” in response to a grand jury in Washington refusing to indict Democratic lawmakers in connection with a video in which they urged U.S. military members to resist illegal orders.

Jeffries called the six lawmakers who participated in the video patriotic Americans and said the grand jury upheld and honored the Constitution.

“The attempt to indict Members of Congress for exercising their constitutionally-protected First Amendment rights is another shameful example of the cancerous rot that engulfs the Trump administration,” Jeffries said in a Wednesday morning statement.

Jeffries also said President Trump and “corrupt political hacks at the Department of Justice will not silence or intimidate us.”

Moscow will observe the limits of the last nuclear arms pact with the United States that expired last week as long as it sees that Washington is doing the same, Russia’s top diplomat said Wednesday.

The New START treaty expired Feb. 5, leaving no restrictions on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century and fueling fears of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last year declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit, but U.S. President Donald Trump has argued that he wants China to be a part of a new pact — something Beijing has rejected.

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Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance on Wednesday visited the Alley of Martyrs, a national cemetery located near the Caspian Sea in Baku as he wrapped up a trip abroad with a final stop in Azerbaijan.

The Vances were joined by Azerbaijan’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Elnur Mammadov.

The memorial commemorates those who died during Azerbaijan’s breakaway from the Soviet Union and during ongoing territorial disputes with Armenia.

The Vances walked past a row of black slate markers and then stood before a wreath of red and white flowers in front of an eternal flame at the memorial. They then moved toward a wall and gazed out at the foggy Caspian Sea.

A day earlier in Armenia, Vance made a similar visit when he stopped at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan.

House Speaker Mike Johnson could be seen talking late into the night with holdout GOP lawmakers as he tried to prevent a vote ahead on the Trump administration’s tariffs on foreign goods from Canada, Mexico and other countries.

Several Republicans had joined with Democrats to push forward with the tariff vote, denying Johnson his slim majority hold on the chamber.

As GOP leaders worked the room, it still wasn’t enough. The tally on the procedural step failed, 214-217, meaning a vote to disapprove of the Trump administration’s tariff plan is expected as soon as Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Washington on Wednesday evening, Netanyahu’s office said. The meeting took place immediately after Netanyahu arrived in the U.S. for a last-minute visit with President Donald Trump. The Israeli leader has urged him to expand the negotiations with Iran to include a number of issues that concern Israel, including Iran’s ballistic missiles program and its support for militant proxies in the region, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

Netanyahu’s office said they discussed regional issues, and Witkoff and Kushner gave Netanyahu an update on the first round of talks held with Iran last Friday in Oman. A few dozen protesters waved Palestinian flags and blew horns as Netanyahu’s motorcade arrived at Blair House, the president’s official guest residence on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the White House.