Ayesha Bakshi

Yes, Epstein was the biggest story of the day, basically, in the hearing, and multiple Democrats on the committee and one prominent Republican accused Pambondi of basically engaging in a massive cover-up when it comes to the Epstein files.

This goes back quite a way because there are a lot of allies of President Donald Trump who are in the Trump administration right now who, going back to years before Trump even retook the Oval Office,

were suggesting to the American public that the FBI, the Department of Justice, knew things about Jeffrey Epstein and his potential associates and knew things about crimes that they may have committed that they were covering up.

And we even saw from Pam Bondi when she joined the Trump administration, when she became the attorney general,

she suggested to the American public that there was a lot that had been covered up under the administration of Joe Biden and that her Justice Department was going to reveal.

At one point, she said in an interview that there was a client list on her desk and that things were going to come out.

Later, she walked back that comment and suggested that there were just some files on her desk and she wasn't referring to the list.

But Pam Bondi has been part of

setting these expectations for the American people that there was something corrupt that happened under previous administrations and that the current Trump administration was going to do something about it.

And then we've seen unfold when it comes to this story, a big kind of walk back from the Trump administration

Pam Bondi, her Justice Department released a memo in July saying it had reviewed its files on Jeffrey Epstein and that it hadn't found anything that warranted further investigation of someone who hadn't previously been charged.

Only Jeffrey Epstein and his longtime accomplice and former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, were charged by federal prosecutors in relation to

sex trafficking.

Jeffrey Epstein died in a Manhattan jail before he could go to trial, and Ghislaine Maxwell was ultimately convicted of sex trafficking, a minor to him, and she's serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Pam Bondi's Justice Department said that there's no one else implicated in the files that should be investigated and that further disclosures of the documents wasn't warranted.

They talked about the idea of child sexual abuse materials and not wanting to release them.

And basically, this sparked a lot of outrage from a wide segment of the American public, not just Democrats who normally criticize the Trump administration, also a lot of supporters of Donald Trump who have believed that there's more to this story than what the U.S.

government has predicted.

And that led to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle passing an act trying to force the Justice Department's hands when it comes to releasing these documents.

The department was supposed to do that by December 19th.