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The Epstein Chronicles
The Pam Bondi Congressional Oversight Committee Epstein Related Transcript (Part 10) (6/8/26)
00:14:36
Pam Bondi’s congressional transcript showed her trying to defend the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files while repeatedly distancing herself from the day-to-day mechanics of the review. She told House Oversight lawmakers that Todd...
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What's up everyone? And welcome to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to dive right back in and pick up where we left off with Pam Bondi and her interview with Congress. Question I'd like to spend a little more time on the document release themselves. So as you well know, on December 19th, which was with the 30 day statutory deadline, the department released about 4,000 files. Then over the next few days there were three other releases and then on January 30th of this year, a big release of about three and a half million documents which the department said fulfilled its duties under the Act. You have touched on this today, so I don't want you to repeat yourself, but what do you recall as far as the process for that first production for working with survivors councils? Any recollection of how that process functioned? No. Question. Okay. Would Mr. Blanche probably have a more detailed understanding of that answer or some of his staff? Question There was a letter from Mr. Blanche on the day of that first production that listed the components of DOJ that were included in the search in the poll, and that was FBI. I can give you a minute. It may be one of the exhibits that was already passed out. What was the date of that? I think that was on December 19th. I don't think that's been marked as an exhibit. It's literally just a few agencies. I don't have the document. It hasn't been marked redacted. Question. Okay, yeah, it was just telling Congress that oig, of course, inside of doj, the Office of the Inspector General, the FBI, of course the Bureau of Prisons, which makes sense. SDNY and sdfl, the two jurisdictions in which the two Epstein investigations occurred. We were just wondering whether other components of doj, such as the dea, would have been part of the collection process. Dylan, I think the witness is entitled to see the document before she answers questions about it. Redacted. That's fine. We can do that. Give us a second to pull it out. Bondi and I'd rely on what Deputy Attorney General Blanche put in writing regarding the components who were involved. Redacted Question and that'll save us some time and paper. Would it be your understanding that if Deputy Blanche listed components then that would be your best understanding of the components? Answer yes. Question okay, in that case I don't think we have to do the whole exhibit. Answer and I don't recall the DEA being involved. Question okay, thank you. Answer Whether they were or weren't. Question On December 22, the DOJ released about 11,000 documents. That was the third production of documents. There were four or five day period in which I think there were three or four releases. One of them on December 22 had some redaction related challenges. You could use software to get around some of the redactions or copy and pasting. Do you recall whether the Department had an understanding of those problems before those documents were released? Oh, I don't believe we did. I do recall that there were problems after the fact. On December 23rd, about 30,000 additional pages were released. That's the fourth production. That production included a higher volume of material related to President Trump. It included some allegations against President Trump and so the he gets cut off by Pam Bondi. Can I clarify? Question yeah. Answer I think you said December, wasn't that in August when the 33,000 pages were released? Question December 23rd of last year, the department's fourth EFTA production and that had about that had about 30,000 pages of content, is our understanding. I don't specifically recall that other than it was a rolling release of documents and as they came in, because we continued to get additional documents after EFTA was passed as we were attempting to comply with the order. And I believe that a significant amount, almost maybe a million pages was added from sdny, Southern District of New York. Question we were just going to ask on the day of that release, December 23rd, the department released a statement calling the claims against President Trump that were in the release untrue and sensationalist and unfounded and false. And we just wanted to ask, to the best of your knowledge, were any of the allegations against President Trump that were included in that release investigated by the Department of Justice? Answer I don't believe that they were investigated by any Department of Justice. And that might be a question for the Biden administration because if I recall, it was all just before the 2020 election. Salacious allegations, Always somebody else, always pointing the finger somewhere else. I'm done with maga, I'm done with Pam Bondi, and I'm done with Donald Trump. Question the next day and I think you just alluded to this the department tweeted that SDNY and the FBI had discovered a million more documents. Do you have any recollection of the circumstances of the discovery of those documents? Answer no, but it made it very difficult to comply within the 30 days. Question On January 30, there was the largest release of documents, about three and a half million pages. Deputy Attorney General Blanche at the time wrote another letter to Congress. It's been discussed here today. There was the phrase that more than 6 million pages had been identified as potentially responsive. And the volume, the total volume a release ended up being around three and a half million pages. Three and a half million and six million. Those were page counts. Do you have an understanding or recollection of how many documents were potentially responsive and documents produced? Answer no. And to the best of my knowledge, I asked, I answered that question previously as to why there were so many documents. Question do you have an understanding or recollection as to how many documents were ultimately tagged as unresponsive? I think this has been asked and answered, but you can answer it. Again, not an exact amount. Do you have any recollection or understanding of how many documents were tagged as duplicative? Same. Same. I don't recall the exact number. There I think was a figure in this letter from Mr. Blanche and we can just ask him, but I think he had said around 200,000 pages were redacted or withheld for privilege. Answer yeah, and I was just looking for that letter that I believe you had provided to me and I would refer to that from AG Blanche, as to the number of documents that fell into each category. And that's the letter that you provided to me dated February 14, 2026. Question and so I would assume. But let me just ask for the record, if Mr. Blanche says, hey, around 200,000 pages were redacted or withheld from for privilege. If we wanted to understand, well, how many of those pages were redacted but how many were withheld? That would not be the question that you would have involvement with. Answer correct question Mr. Blanchard's staff would have an understanding of that. Is that right? Bondi? Answer Correct Question thank you. And I would assume the same answer would apply for trying to understand how many documents were withheld under different categories of statutory withholdings. Is that correct? Answer Correct. Could I add one more thing? Question of course. Answer A privilege was produced to you. I don't believe you shown me that today in the documents. Question thank you. I'd like to touch on victim related redaction challenges which have been Discussed to some extent here. I would like to just introduce as minority exhibit an example of that problem. Bondi. Minority exhibit c was mark 4 identification redacted. I'll give you a moment to look that over, Mr. Gwinn. Council, can I just clarify something? We're confident that the way this proceeding and these exhibits are going to be treated, the way that this transcript and these exhibits. You're not concerned with introducing this into the record? Redacted. We're not going to read any of the identifying information you see on the document, Gwen. Okay, great. Bondi. It was just introduced to the record though, so that'll be sealed. Redacted. Yeah, exactly. That will not be publicly available. Redacted. Question so if you have a moment to look this over. This is an email that was originally included in the January 30th production from the department. I know that there has been some public discussion of this email previously. You may have discussed this email previously. I think from our point of view, this is a difficult email to understand. The subject is Epstein victim list. There's a list of names. The vast majority of those names are not redacted. Do you have a sense or understanding of how this document could have gone unredacted? Answer no, but I would believe it's not intentional. We had hundreds of lawyers that were working around the clock using their best efforts to protect victims and that was the fear of human error. Working such long hours to get 3 million pages plus of documents out within 30 days. Why not just use AI? Why not just use the technology that's available to you? Bondi, I guess she was busy worrying about the DAO though. Question Is it your best understanding that every document that was released did experience the full internal review process? In other words, every document benefited from a first level review and QCs when appropriate? I believe so. Question did you ever receive any information or understanding as to how this particular document could have made it through any kind of review process? Answer no. I do recall that I don't know which era it was, but one of the reviewers was working, I believe very long hours and didn't properly hit save after the redactions were done. And I believe Deputy Attorney General at the time Blanche addressed that. I don't know if this is the particular document question. I was just going to. I think Mr. Blanche was also mentioned that in the briefing. You don't know whether that issue ended up affecting this document or not. Yes, I think from a public point of view, the department by its own admission has taken down several thousand documents that mistakenly implicated survivor's identity or personal information. Do you have a personal perception of how the department's victim redaction process performed? Bondi? Well, if one victim's name is released is it didn't perform properly and multiple victims names were released and of course that in my opinion was done inadvertently. And everyone I knew involved in the process care deeply about protecting the identity of the victims. Question did you gain any understanding of whether there were particular common themes that were emerging in those mistakes? Whether it was somebody not hitting save? I'm not sure why that is so bothersome to you. It helps us to have oversight of the process. Do you have an understanding whether it was technical review or a process issue? Answer I'm not aware other than what I just mentioned. Question. Thank you. Answer and Deputy Attorney General Blanche at the time addressed I believe all the questions here when he came with me a few months ago to discuss all of these issues. But I don't think you were present for that. She always has to try and get a dig in. Here's an idea. Save your stupid ass commentary and and answer the questions. And frankly, I really hope whoever the next administration is launches an investigation into Pam Bondi.
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Question in your review, do you think that the department owes anything, whether that's an apology or financial compensation to survivors whose identities were exposed in the document released? We absolutely owe an apology to any victim's name anytime it's inadvertently released. I'd like to touch on the claim that some material may have been over redacted or removed for possibly political reasons. And so I will introduce as minority exhibit D this photograph. You may be familiar with it. This is a photograph that was introduced on January 30. It appears to be, and the committee's understanding is that it is a photograph of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other individuals with Mr. Epstein on Mr. Epstein's island in the U. S Virgin Islands. The photo was reportedly included in the initial production on January 30, then taken down and then reposted after there were press inquiries on the Subject, do you have any understanding of why this image was taken down? Answer, I do. I believe that Deputy Attorney General Blanche or his staff was believe that this was AI for some reason and not real. It was taken down, but it was put back up. I'm not sure if it was intentionally taken down, but it was put back up because it was confirmed that it was Howard Lutnick and his family. Question do you have any direct or indirect knowledge of the photo being taken down for political reasons? No question. I would like to introduce as minority exhibit E one more similar image. Harmeet Dhillon jumps in. Is that D redacted? Sorry, that's D. Dylan. No, it's e redacted. It's E. The Lutnick photo is D. The new exhibit is E. Question I don't know whether you've seen this image before. It was part of the production on December 19th of last year. It shows a series of photographs taken at one of Mr. Epstein's homes. It has Bates number EFTA 0000468. In the bottom left portion of the photograph, there's another photograph of what appears to be President Trump prior to being president, it would seem. And Glenn Maxwell. That's a publicly known photograph. And so it's a question of public record that the first lady as well as Mr. Epstein are obscured in the middle of that photograph underneath on the desk here. And there's one more image. It's hard to tell. I think there's a view of that image on top of the image I just described as President Trump prior to being in office with a group of women in bathing suits. This photograph, this photo was originally included in the first December 19th production. Same pattern where it went down and when it came back up. Do you have any understanding of why that image was taken down? Answer no question. Do you have any direct or indirect knowledge of this photo being taken down for political reasons? Answer no. All right, folks, we're going to wrap up right here. And in the next episode dealing with the topic, we're going to pick up where we left off. All the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.
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