Former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to answer questions from Congress on whether President Donald ‌Trump was aware of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s activities that led ​to his criminal indictments or whether he directed her to redact Justice Department files that ⁠were made public, Democratic lawmakers said on Friday (May 29, 2026).

In a closed-door interview before the House of Representatives Oversight Committee on Friday (May 29, 2026), Ms. Bondi also said Todd Blanche, who now serves as acting Attorney General, had been responsible for the documents’ release.

“I ‌did not lead every aspect of this effort or conduct that document review myself. I delegated oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,” Ms. Bondi said ‌in a prepared statement obtained by Reuters.

Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the committee, ‌told ⁠reporters Ms. Bondi refused to answer questions pertaining to Mr. Trump, saying a Justice Department lawyer ⁠sitting next to her “stepped in and told the former Attorney General that she was not going to answer those questions.”

Under her tenure, the Justice Department said it would not release information that exposed victims or compromised ongoing investigations.

Ms. Bondi faced sharp criticism from ​Democrats and some Republicans during her tenure for ‌her handling of the release of millions of documents related to Epstein.

Democrats and some Republicans accused Ms. Bondi of trying to shield Mr. Trump from scrutiny. Mr. Trump opposed the release of the information until shortly before Congress overwhelmingly passed a law ordering its release.

Democratic Representative Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico said ‌Ms. Bondi told the committee that the Justice Department has released 3 million out of 6 ​million Epstein-related documents. “This is a cover-up,” she said.

In her opening statement to the panel, Ms. Bondi acknowledged “redaction errors” but did not detail those mistakes. She also defended the ⁠Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case and the release of the documents.

“To the best of my knowledge, the department produced everything required,” she said in her statement, which was obtained by Reuters.

The interview with ‌Ms. Bondi concluded without her speaking to reporters gathered outside the committee room.

Before Ms. Bondi’s testimony began, Chairman James Comer of Kentucky told reporters: “We will be asking today about why documents still are not released…what documents remain and why they haven’t been turned over.”

Mr. Trump fired Ms. Bondi on April 2, in part due to her handling of the Epstein files.

Mr. Trump and Epstein socialised in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he ended the relationship before Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from ‌a minor. Epstein was arrested again in 2019 and charged with sex trafficking of minors, accused of recruiting and abusing underage girls in ​New York and Florida. His death that year in a New York jail cell was ruled a suicide. The Epstein files revealed the financier’s ties to powerful people, including ⁠Mr. Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Duke of York. All have said they had ⁠no knowledge of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking.

Mr. Garcia criticised Comer’s decision to not videotape Ms. Bondi’s interview, which he said would have allowed the public to gauge her demeanour.

One survivor of Epstein’s ‌abuse was also on hand to criticise Ms. Bondi’s handling of the material.

“It boggles my mind that the Department of Justice released uncensored photos… the Department of Justice released pornography. That is unacceptable,” a survivor told reporters outside the committee hearing room.

First Lady ‌Melania Trump on Thursday (April 9, 2026) ​denied ever ⁠having a relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and ‌said the claims about it ‌are defaming her. “The ‌lies ⁠linking me with ⁠the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” Melania ​Trump said ‌in a rare address from the White House.

She said she ‌had never had ​a relationship with Epstein or his associate ⁠Ghislaine Maxwell, with whom she said ‌she had only a casual correspondence. “I am not Epstein’s victim,” Melania Trump said. Epstein was arrested ‌again in 2019 on ​federal charges of sex trafficking of minors. ⁠His 2019 death in ⁠a Manhattan jail cell was ruled ‌a suicide.

U.S. President Donald Trump removed Attorney General Pam Bondi from her post on Thursday (April 2, 2026), a White House official said, following mounting frustration with ​her performance, including her handling of investigative files related to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey ‌Epstein.

Mr. Trump had also reportedly grown frustrated that Ms. Bondi was not moving quickly enough ​to prosecute critics and adversaries who he wanted to face criminal charges.

During ⁠her tenure as the top U.S. law enforcement official, Ms. Bondi was a combative champion of Mr. Trump’s agenda and dismantled the Justice Department’s longstanding tradition of independence from the White House in its investigations.

But it ‌was repeated criticism over the Epstein files, including from Trump allies and some Republican lawmakers, that came to dominate her tenure. Ms. Bondi was accused of covering ‌up or mismanaging the release of records on the DOJ’s sex trafficking investigations into Epstein, ‌a ⁠financier who cultivated ties with an array of wealthy and powerful figures.

The ⁠issue created political headaches for Mr. Trump and drew renewe dscrutiny of his past friendship with Epstein, which he has said ended decades ago.

Her ouster could lead to a shake-up in strategy at the Justice Department and potentially ​a renewed push to deploy the U.S. ‌legal system against Mr. Trump’s targets. Ms. Bondi is the second senior Trump official to be ousted recently. Mr. Trump removed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on March 5 following criticism of her management of the agency and Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda.

Ms. Bondi, a former Republican state attorney general ‌in Florida, said she worked on restoring the Justice Department’s focus on violent crime ​and rebuilding trust with Mr. Trump’s supporters after federal prosecutors twice criminally charged Trump during his years out of power.

Ms. Bondi also faced criticism over the removal ⁠of dozens of career prosecutors who worked on investigations disfavored by Ms. Trump, with critics accusing her of abandoning the DOJ’s traditional focus on even-handed justice. Ms. Bondi defended the rollout of the Epstein files, ‌saying the Trump administration had been more transparent on the issue than previous presidents and that DOJ lawyers worked on a compressed timeline to review reams of material.

During a combative hearing before a House of Representatives panel in January, Ms. Bondi responded to criticism with political attacks directed at lawmakers. She refused to apologise or look at Epstein victims and their relatives who attended the proceedings.

Ms. Bondi early last year played into fevered speculation about the Epstein files, saying a ‌client list was on her desk for review. But after an initial release included material that had largely ​already been public, the DOJ and FBI declared in July that the case was closed and that no further disclosures were warranted.

The move prompted an eruption ⁠of criticism and eventually a bipartisan law passed in November requiring the Justice Department to release ⁠nearly all of its files. The release of roughly 3 million pages of records still did not quell the controversy, as lawmakers criticised redactions in the files and ‌the disclosure of the identities of some Epstein victims.

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Ms. Bondi and she was set to testify on April 14.

Paris prosecutors opened on Wednesday (February 18, 2026) two new investigations into potential sex abuse crimes and financial wrongdoings linked to Jeffrey Epstein following the release of millions of files of the millionaire financier and convicted sex offender, and called on possible victims to come forward.

Paris prosecutor Laurence Beccuau said the investigations are seeking to use the files released by the U.S. administration, media reports and new complaints that are being filed.

“All that data … some will shed light on others to be able to get a well-informed, very broad, panoramic view,” Ms. Beccuau said on France Info news broadcaster.

One investigation will focus on sex abuse crimes, the other on financial wrongdoing, each involving specialized magistrates, she added.

The move comes after the release by the U.S. Justice Department of more than three million pages of documents, as well as thousands of videos and photos related to Epstein, who died behind bars in 2019.

“These publications will inevitably reactivate the trauma of certain victims,” she said. “We are convinced that some [victims] are not necessarily known to us, and that perhaps these publications will lead them to come forward.”

She called on victims who may have never spoken up before to file formal complaints or make witness accounts to feed French and foreign investigations.

Ms. Beccuau also said some material from old investigations is to be revisited in the light of new revelations.

She was referring to the investigation into a French modeling agent, Jean-Luc Brunel, accused of rape and sex trafficking of minors.

The probe was closed in 2022 after he was found dead in his jail cell in Paris. Brunel, a frequent companion of Epstein, was considered central to the French investigation into alleged sexual exploitation of women and girls by Epstein and his circle.

Epstein traveled often to France and had apartments in Paris.

In France, the highest-profile figure impacted by the recent release of the Epstein files in France is former Culture Minister Jack Lang, 86, who stepped down earlier this month as head of the Arab World Institute in Paris over suspicions of tax fraud.

The financial prosecutors’ office opened an investigation into Lang and his daughter Caroline Lang’s alleged links to Jeffrey Epstein through an offshore company based in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea.

The U.S. ‍Justice Department has found more than a million ​more documents potentially tied to convicted sex ‌offender Jeffrey Epstein, delaying ​a full release for weeks while officials redact details to protect victims, DOJ said on Wednesday (December 24, 2025).

President Donald Trump’s administration began releasing files related to criminal investigations of Epstein, the late American financier who was friends ​with Mr. Trump in the 1990s, to comply ⁠with a law passed by Congress last month.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress passed the law over Mr. Trump’s ​objections, requiring that ⁠all documents be released by December 19 while allowing partial redactions to protect victims.

Releases so far have contained extensive redactions, angering ‌some Republicans and doing little to ‌defuse a scandal threatening the party ahead of the 2026 midterm ‍elections.

In a message shared on social media on Wednesday, the Justice Department said more ‍than a million additional documents potentially related to Epstein had been uncovered by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, without elaborating on when or how the documents were found.

“We have lawyers working around the clock to review and ⁠make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the ​documents as soon as possible,” the department ⁠said. “Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks.”

The Justice Department on Friday (August 22, 2025) released transcripts of interviews its No. 2 official did with Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell as the Trump administration scrambles to present itself as transparent amid a fierce backlash over an earlier refusal to disclose a trove of records from the sex-trafficking case.

The disclosure represents the latest Trump administration effort to repair self-inflicted political wounds after failing to deliver on expectations that its own officials had created through conspiracy theories and bold pronouncements that never came to pass.

By making public two days worth of interviews, officials appear to be hoping to at least temporarily keep at bay sustained anger from President Donald Trump’s base even as they continue to sit on other evidence they had suggested was being prepared for public release.

Maxwell recalled knowing about Trump and possibly meeting him for the first time in 1990, when her newspaper magnate father, Robert Maxwell, was the owner of the New York Daily News.

“I may have met Donald Trump at that time, because my father was friendly with him and liked him very much,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript.

Maxwell said her father was fond of Trump’s then-wife, Ivana, “because she was also from Czechoslovakia, where my dad was from.” Maxwell, a onetime socialite who was convicted in 2021 of helping lure teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, was interviewed over the course of two days last month by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at a Florida courthouse.

After her interview, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal prison in Florida where she had been serving a 20-year sentence to a minimum security prison camp in Texas. Neither her lawyer nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have explained the reason for the move.

The Epstein case had long captured public attention in part because of the wealthy financer’s social connections over the years to prominent figures including Prince Andrew, former President Bill Clinton and Trump, who has said his relationship with Epstein ended years before. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls, and was found dead a month later in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a suicide.

The saga has consumed the Trump administration over the last month following an abrupt two-page announcement from the FBI and Justice Department that Epstein had killed himself despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, that a “client list” that Attorney General Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk did not actually exist and that no additional documents from the high-profile investigation were suitable to be released.

The announcement produced outrage from conspiracy theorists, online sleuths and Trump supporters who had been hoping to see proof of a government coverup, an expectation driven in part by comments from officials including FBI Director Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who on podcasts before taking their current positions had repeatedly promoted the idea that damaging details about prominent people were being withheld.

Mr. Patel, for instance, said in at least one podcast interview before becoming director that Epstein’s “black book” was under the “direct control of the director of the FBI.” The administration had an early stumble in February when far-right influencers were invited to the White House in February and provided by Ms. Bondi with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained documents that had largely already been in the public domain.

After the first release fell flat, Ms. Bondi said officials were poring over a “truckload” of previously withheld evidence she said had been handed over by the FBI and raised expectations of forthcoming releases.

But after a weekslong review of evidence in the government’s possession, the Justice Department said last month that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.” The department noted that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to protect victims and “only a fraction” of it “would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”

Faced with fury from the base, Mr. Trump sought to quickly turn the page, shutting down questioning of Bondi about Epstein at a White House Cabinet meeting and deriding as “weaklings” supporters who he said were falling for the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.” The kerfuffle also created bitter divisions within the administration, as Bondi and Bongino angrily clashed at a White House meeting last month. Bongino was uncharacteristically silent on social media for several days after that.