Former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi chose to challenge the House of Representatives by not appearing next week before its Oversight Committee, where she was summoned to testify as part of the investigations into the case of confessed sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
Bondi, who was removed from her position by U.S. President Donald Trump last week, had been summoned to testify before the lower House on April 14 in a bipartisan summons.
However, a spokesperson for the Oversight Committee stated on Wednesday that the Department of Justice informed them that Bondi would not appear because she is no longer Attorney General, even though after her dismissal last Thursday, April 2, it was specified that she was to appear before the House in any case.
The spokesperson added that the committee will contact Bondi's personal attorney “to discuss next steps,” as her testimony is now in the air with this decision.
The former Attorney General is facing criticism for her handling of the Epstein case investigation, which were also considered a determining factor for Trump to dismiss her from his administration.
How was Pam Bondi's hearing regarding the Epstein case?
Her intervention at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee last February was controversial, where she was very combative, refused to apologize to some of Epstein's victims who were in the room, and aggressively defended Trump.
In addition, she went viral when she responded to one of the questions by stating that the Dow Jones Industrial Average of Wall Street “is above 50,000 points right now,” using the record high of the stock index as an argument to divert attention from questions about the pedophile's case.
The Oversight Committee's investigations began last year with a judicial summons for the Department of Justice to deliver all the case files (with sensitive details, such as victims' names, redacted).
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have already testified before the committee, and on Tuesday it was also learned that Microsoft billionaire co-founder Bill Gates will appear on June 10 before the same body to explain the details of his relationship with Epstein, who died in 2019 after being found hanged in his cell in a federal prison.
