Michael Gold

mr chairman okay go ahead michael wow that was so disrespectful i think this might be the signature exchange of the hearing i think i mean listen i don't want to say that congressional hearings that last for four hours get reduced to one moment but i think if this is the one moment that i think people are really going to be talking about it was very striking and uh you know

To give Pam Bondi some credit, there was an exchange she had later with Deborah Ross from North Carolina, where Ross asked her what she thought about the idea of Ghislaine Maxwell getting clemency.

And Bondi said, I basically, hopefully, hopefully Maxwell will die in prison.

I mean, she seemed to not have, she doesn't approve of Maxwell's move to a minimum security prison, but she also didn't have any answers.

So I do want to make it clear that she does take the FCK seriously, but this was a incredibly striking conversation.

An incredibly striking moment that the congressman Jayapal had in this hearing.

It was really striking.

And there's photos going around of Bondi sitting at the table with these victims behind her, which I think is a very memorable image given the conversation around the Epstein victims.

Well, that's a good question.

I think a lot of people who are in Trump world thought that Bonnie did a great job defending herself, that she held her own, that she basically subjected herself to an irrelevant question from Democrats that she was able to fight back.

I mean, you saw people saying that who were once in Trump's orbit, who are in Trump's orbit.

The Epstein issue is pretty divisive.

I think one thing to remember here is that Republicans on the Hill, as they sort of dismiss what they see some of the Democrats saying about this, is that Republicans like James Comer, who's leading the Epstein investigation for oversight, have said the Democrats aren't focused enough on the victims, that Democrats are not concerned enough about what the survivors want and how to protect the survivors.

I think you saw in this hearing that

Jayapal really tried to emphasize, well, this is about the survivors.

The survivors aren't happy.

And Thomas Massey also, I think, had a moment in exchange with her where he said, you know, these redactions are not we wanted these redactions to protect the victims.

You're not protecting the victims.

So I think this this moment that we're looking at here really sort of neuters what's been a signature argument.

But I think Republicans generally are going to be supportive of the attorney general.