Bondi's Incompetence Is the Latest Insult for Epstein's Victims

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/opinion/bondi-epstein-justice.html

No paywall link
https://archive.li/i7jeW

The hearing in the House Judiciary Committee room this week offered a grim tableau of the state of American justice. Sitting in the gallery were victims of Jeffrey Epstein, women who have waited decades for clarity and accountability. Sitting before them was Attorney General Pam Bondi. When offered the opportunity to apologize to these women for the Department of Justice’s disastrous handling of the Epstein files, Ms. Bondi didn’t just decline; she sneered. Instead, she demanded that Democrats apologize to President Trump.

She proceeded to subject committee members from both parties to schoolyard taunts. She called the ranking member a “washed-up, loser lawyer.” She derided Thomas Massie — a Kentucky Republican who helped force the release of the Epstein documents after Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi had kept them hidden — as a “failed politician.” And at one point, in a bizarre non sequitur, she responded to a question she did not like by boasting that the Dow Jones industrial average had surpassed 50,000 points.

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. 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.

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. Her department was then tasked with a clear mandate: release the information while protecting the victims’ privacy, national security and active investigations. 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. As Annie Farmer, a survivor who testified against Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s partner and associate, noted, it is “hard to imagine a more egregious way of not protecting victims.” Ms. Bondi’s department shattered the trust of women who had already been betrayed by the legal system once before.

*snip*