Pam Bondi Claims That Because She Was Fired, She No Longer Has to Testify on Epstein
When the axe finally came down on the head of former Attorney General Pam Bondi last week and she found herself the second cabinet-level member fired by President Donald Trump in this administration, we noted that the AG was scheduled to appear before House Oversight Committee on April 14 to answer for one of the things Trump was no doubt most annoyed by: The fact that the Jeffrey Epstein story simply won’t go away. She would not be there voluntarily; a handful of Republicans broke ranks and voted with Democratic members of the House to issue a subpoena to compel her to appear and answer questions about both the federal investigation into Epstein and the repeatedly botched and drawn-out release of the Epstein files by Bondi’s DOJ. But as we speculated at the time, “she’s reportedly been attempting to wriggle out of having to appear.” Today, she made those plans explicit via a statement from one of her old toadies at the DOJ.
Turns out, “Ms. Bondi no longer holds that office” of U.S. Attorney General, according to current Assistant AG Patrick D. Davis. Were you aware of this, or the incredibly privileges that getting fired apparently confers upon a person? According to Davis, because Bondi was dismissed from the position, “as a result, because Ms. Bondi no longer can testify in her official capacity as Attorney General, the Department’s position is that the subpoena no longer obligates her to appear on April 14. We kindly ask that you confirm that the subpoena is withdrawn.”
NEW: Pam Bondi is backing out of her scheduled deposition on the Epstein files.
DOJ claims she can just ignore a House committee’s subpoena because she’s not AG anymore. www.huffpost.com/entry/pam-bo… w/ @delaneyrules.bsky.social
— Jen Bendery (@jbendery.bsky.social) Apr 8, 2026 at 11:52 AM
Now that is some legal and rhetorical jiu-jitsu, right there, and something that would be a hell of a precedent: Any time that Donald Trump doesn’t want a member of his administration to have to testify before Congress on a sensitive or damaging subject, he can simply fire them the week before! It’s foolproof! Note of course that if members of the House Oversight Committee accepted this specious reasoning and said they would subpoena current, acting AG Todd Blanche instead, the DOJ would surely insist that he was also unable to testify, given that he wasn’t Attorney General during the events in question. A true Gordian Knot of Washington insider bullshit.
Thankfully, even our neutered Congress, which delights in giving away its responsibilities and constitutionally vested powers to other branches whenever possible, isn’t going to stand for this one. The notably Republican-led panel is still reportedly planning moving forward with its subpoena to Bondi, which they note was in her own name, not a summons for the current Attorney General. The panel’s spokeswoman said that they would be contacting “Pam Bondi’s personal counsel to discuss next steps regarding scheduling her deposition,” while individual members of Congress let her have it with a bit more rhetorical vigor regardless of their partisan status. Rep. Robert Garcia (CA) stressed that “our bipartisan subpoena is to Pam Bondi, whether she is the Attorney General or not. She must come in to testify immediately, and if she defies the subpoena, we will begin contempt charges in the Congress. The survivors deserve justice.”
Even the likes of Rep. Nancy Mace (SC), who once reportedly forced her staff to create and upvote reddit posts calling her the “hottest” member of the House of Representatives, didn’t miss an opportunity to look like she was doing something for Epstein victims. Of Bondi’s pathetic attempts to weasel out of testimony, she said the following: “Pam Bondi cannot escape accountability simply because she no longer holds the office of Attorney General. Our motion to subpoena Pam Bondi, which was passed by the Oversight Committee, was for Bondi by name, not by title. She will still have to appear before the Oversight Committee for a sworn deposition. The American people deserve answers, and we expect her to appear as soon as a new date is set.”
If Pam Bondi doesn’t testify, we will hold her in contempt.
— Rep. Robert Garcia (@robertgarcia.house.gov) Apr 8, 2026 at 11:36 AM
Trump was quite clearly dissatisfied by pretty much everything to do with Bondi’s tenure over the DOJ, as she repeatedly failed to vindictively prosecute his enemies in a timely manner, and was witness to multiple indictments being thrown out by judges who couldn’t help but note that they were blatantly partisan prosecutions. She likewise failed to keep a lid on all the Epstein chatter, not helped by her infamous declaration that the Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk” to review, followed by an announcement a few months later to say that the so-called client list never in fact existed after all. And of course, who could forget the epic self-own of when the DOJ distributed personalized binders of “Epstein files” to a handful of conservative shill influencers, only for those same influencers to admit that the binders contained zero new information of any kind? Ultimately, Bondi presided over waves of Epstein files releases where the biggest revelation was of Trump’s own accused conduct with a minor. Despite it all, he’d probably still pardon her/absolve her if Congress voted to hold her in contempt, but it’s still worth doing anyway, for the principle of the thing.
Todd Blanche, meanwhile, is continuing to operate as a seeming DOJ figuredhead, with Trump perhaps wanting to see how malleable he is to demands of indictments against his enemies before switching to the rumored long-term replacement of current EPA administrator/climate destroyer Lee Zeldin, a man who is orders of magnitude worse as a sycophant than even Bondi ever was. So considering she’s leaving us with what could well be an even worse DOJ, the least Bondi could do in the course of her undignified exit from popular culture is suck it up and submit to a congressional subpoena like any of us would be forced to do. “I got fired” does not confer upon a person some kind of immunity from having to answer for what you did while you were on the job. Quite the opposite, actually.