Former Attorney General Pam Bondi told House investigators she handed oversight of the Jeffrey Epstein files release to the man now nominated to replace her, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, raising fresh questions about his role just as he faces a Senate confirmation fight.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released the transcript of Bondi's interview on Thursday, one day after President Donald Trump announced he intended to nominate Blanche to the Attorney General post permanently. The timing puts Blanche's management of one of the most politically charged document releases in recent memory squarely in front of the senators who will decide his future.
In her May 29 opening statement to the panel, Bondi was direct about who ran the process. As Newsmax reported, Bondi stated plainly:
"I did not lead every aspect of this effort nor conduct that document review myself. I delegated that oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche."
That delegation, the transcript shows, was not limited to a narrow slice of the work. Blanche served as the point person on training the reviewers, making privilege determinations, and deciding what material to withhold from the public. In separate remarks attributed to CNN and The Hill, Bondi described Blanche as the person who "was in charge of the process and the entire release of the Epstein files."
So the man Trump wants leading the Justice Department was, by his predecessor's own account, the one steering every major decision in a document release that has drawn bipartisan criticism for months.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed on November 19, required the DOJ to publish nearly all unclassified materials within 30 days. The department says it has published roughly 3 million pages. Democrats contend millions of pages remain withheld.
The gap between those two claims has fueled the controversy. But the problems go beyond volume.
Reviewers botched redactions during the release process, exposing identities of individuals described as victims. An unsigned July 2025 DOJ-FBI memo declared there was no Epstein "client list", a conclusion that struck many observers as conveniently tidy. When House investigators asked Bondi who managed that memo, she said she could not recall.
She also declined to discuss conversations with Trump, including a reported exchange in which she told the president his name appeared in the files. When investigators pressed on White House communications, Harmeet Dhillon, the head of DOJ's Civil Rights Division, who attended the interview alongside House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, cut off the questions on privilege grounds.
Bondi referred questions about the Southern District of New York's Epstein-related work to Blanche and U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. At nearly every turn, the trail led back to Blanche.
Getting Bondi in front of the committee was itself a fight. In March, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina forced a 24-19 committee vote to subpoena the then-attorney general. She was joined by Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, all voting with Democrats to compel Bondi's testimony.
That bipartisan majority was notable. Five Republicans broke with leadership to demand answers on the Epstein files.
But after Trump fired Bondi in April, Chairman Comer downgraded her appearance from a sworn, recorded deposition to an unsworn, unrecorded transcribed interview. The practical effect: Bondi faced no penalty for evasion and no oath requiring candor. The transcript the committee released Thursday is the product of that softer format.
Even so, the document contains enough to sharpen the focus on Blanche. Bondi's repeated deferrals to her deputy make clear that any serious congressional inquiry into how the Epstein files were handled must eventually go through him.
The disclosure lands at an inconvenient moment for the nominee. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, told reporters it was "hard to say" whether Blanche could get confirmed. Two Judiciary Committee Republicans, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, said they were undecided.
In a narrowly divided Senate, two or three Republican holdouts can sink a nomination. Blanche's prior role as Trump's personal attorney already invited scrutiny about independence. Now his direct management of a controversial, error-plagued document release gives skeptics a concrete policy record to question, one that touches victims, redaction failures, and an unsigned memo that conveniently concluded no client list existed.
Oversight Committee Democrats have signaled they could force a committee vote to subpoena Blanche himself, arguing the Bondi transcript makes his testimony unavoidable. Whether Republicans on the committee would again cross party lines, as five did in March, remains an open question.
What emerges from the transcript is a familiar Washington pattern: the person nominally in charge says someone else handled it, the person who handled it hasn't been asked about it under oath, and the committee that could compel answers has already diluted its own enforcement tools.
Bondi can't recall who managed the unsigned memo. She won't discuss what she told the president. Dhillon invoked privilege to block questions about White House involvement. Comer stripped the subpoena of its teeth after Bondi left office. And the man Bondi says ran the entire process is now up for the top job at the department that conducted the review.
None of this means wrongdoing occurred. But it means the public still doesn't have a clear, accountable answer about why redactions failed, why millions of pages may remain hidden, and why a memo with no signature declared the matter essentially closed.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act was supposed to end the secrecy. Trump signed it. Congress passed it with broad support. The American people were promised sunlight. What they got instead was 3 million pages, botched redactions, an anonymous memo, and a chain of officials pointing at each other.
If Todd Blanche truly ran this process from start to finish, then senators weighing his confirmation have every reason to put him under oath and ask him to account for it, before they hand him the keys to the entire Justice Department.
Transparency isn't transparency when nobody will say who decided what to hide.
