House Dem Reveals ‘Combative’ Pam Bondi Defended Not Meeting With Survivors: ‘Wouldn’t Be Appropriate’
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) revealed that former Attorney General Pam Bondi defended her choice not to meet with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse during a hearing.
Bondi appeared before the House Oversight Committee on Friday to answer questions about the handling of the DOJ’s messy release of documents relating to Epstein. The hearing has already caused controversy after House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and the committee scaled back the initial requirements for Bondi to speak under oath and on video. An official transcript will be released, and some House members have already moved to describe Bondi’s responses to the public.
One such member is Rep. Subramanyam, who spoke with CNN’s Boris Sanchez about the former attorney general’s explanations for the DOJ’s missteps. When asked what Bondi revealed at the hearing, Subramanyam was blunt in his assessment.
“Not a lot,” he said. “Not a lot. I will say that she had some interesting discussions about, for instance, the movement of Ghislaine Maxwell. She said she didn’t have anything to do with that. But she also said, almost defending it, that it makes sense to move prisoners like Ghislaine Maxwell because there might be a risk to their safety in their more maximum security prison.”
Subramanyam then claimed that Bondi stood by her controversial decision not to meet with Epstein survivors, telling Sanchez she said it “wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“She also seems to defend her position of not meeting with the survivors. She said that it made no sense to meet with the survivors for some reason. ‘It wouldn’t be appropriate,’ was the word she used,” he said. “And she didn’t seem to have any awareness of the survivors reaching out to her, wanting to meet or reaching out to her about wanting their own files, their own statements that they made to the DOJ. So in that sense, you know, it was really– she was combative throughout. And she also seemed very uncomfortable with her questions.”
Sanchez asked the congressman to clarify Bondi’s remark, noting that survivors “were in the room with her, standing” and asking if the former attorney general really claimed that meeting with survivors was not the right move.
“At one point, she said she was she didn’t think it was appropriate to meet with survivors,” said Subramanyam. “At another point, she seemed to not recall their outreach to her or to her office, and she didn’t seem to recall a lot of things, even things that happened very recently.”
Watch above via CNN.
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