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Lawmakers Expected to Press A.G. Bondi on Epstein Files Fallout; Bondi Set to Testify Before Lawmakers Amid Epstein Files Scrutiny; Attorney General Bondi Testifies on Capitol Hill. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired February 11, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news, any moment, Attorney General Pam Bondi faces a major test on Capitol Hill as lawmakers will question her handling of the Justice Department and a number of controversies.

Plus, searching for this man in the doorbell camera video, the FBI is pleading for the public's help for any information leading to him and Nancy Guthrie.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And just into CNN, officials now say a U.S. military response to Mexican cartel drones is behind a temporary shutdown of the aerospace around El Paso, Texas. There's new information coming into The Situation Room.

And also this morning, President Trump is expected to meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, later today. Their main focus, Iran.

We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

And we begin with the breaking news. The attorney general of the United States, Pam Bondi, is set to appear before the House Judiciary Committee any moment now. It marks the first time she'll testify before this Congressional panel since assuming her role in President Trump's cabinet.

BROWN: The attorney general's testimony comes after a year riddled with controversies from the Justice Department's investigations in Minnesota to indictments of President Trump's perceived political rivals.

Perhaps most notably, Bondi has been dogged by her handling of the files related to the late convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, since she said this last year,

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients? Will that really happen?

PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: It's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Bondi was later forced to clarify that statement, and we expect lawmakers of both parties, yes, both parties to press her on the fallout today.

BROWN: CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig is here with us. So, Elie, lawmakers have several hot button issues that they could ask Bondi about. The newest one involves the Justice Department's attempt to indict several Democrats who appeared in a video, according to our reporting, urging military members not to follow unlawful orders. And now we've learned a federal grand jury is rejecting that effort.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Pam. Really a stunning development. We learned last night that Bondi's prosecutors had attempted and failed to obtain indictments of those Democratic lawmakers, including, reportedly, Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin. As you said, these are among the lawmakers who made that 90- second internet video urging members of the military to reject illegal orders.

Now, Donald Trump said publicly, he called for prosecutions. He said they should be charged with crimes that are punishable by the death penalty.

So, expect Pam Bondi to be questioned about this. Was there some political impetus here? Are there First Amendment concerns with trying to charge people, elected officials for their speech? And most importantly, Pam Bondi might be asked, will you try again? Because prosecutors can theoretically go back to another grand jury and try again.

Also, another piece of important breaking news yesterday that I expect the attorney general to be asking about, two weeks ago, the FBI searched the Fulton County Elections Office and ended up seizing hundreds of thousands of ballots from Georgia from the 2020 election. Yesterday, we saw the affidavit behind this search. And so I expect Pam Bondi to be questioned again, is this a politically motivated investigation? Some of the sources in the affidavit were questionable. There's information from discredited election conspiracy theorists. There're sources from anonymous internet websites. So, expect Bondi to be asked about that.

And, of course, remember Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, was present at that search. I expect the A.G. will be asked why was she there? Various administration officials have been asked that and have offered conflicting statements so far.

BLITZER: And I suspect, Elie, that Bondi will also get questions about the Epstein files. Some survivors have been very critical of the Department of Justice for the way it's handled recent releases, redacting the names of possible enablers while including information about some of the victims. What kind of questions do you think Bondi will get on this controversy?

HONIG: So, you could be sure, Wolf, that there will be questions about these redactions. Hundreds upon hundreds of names have been blacked out of the Epstein files, talking separately, not about the victims. Those names are supposed to be redacted, but names of people who, according to the files, engaged in some level of wrongdoing.

Now, the big problem with that is the Epstein Files Transparency Act itself says that no record shall be withheld delayed or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.

[10:05:05]

So, look for lawmakers to ask Pam Bondi, how do you justify these redactions and will you unredact those?

Also, I expect there to be questions about, are you at DOJ, in fact, investigating anyone around Jeffrey Epstein criminally?

Now, back in November, Pam Bondi tweeted that, yes, there is a criminal investigation. She tweeted the SDNY U.S. attorney, Jay Clayton, is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I've asked him to take the lead. However, just a week and change ago, the deputy A.G., Todd Blanche, went on Fox News and was much more ambiguous, and he said, quote, the American people need to understand it isn't a crime to party with Mr. Epstein, his words not mine. So, there's mixed signals coming out of DOJ. I expect Pam Bondi to be asked straight up, are you investigating anyone around Epstein or not?

BROWN: And what are some other major issues that are likely to come up today, Elie?

BROWN: Of course, as you mentioned, Minneapolis, the ongoing investigations. Is there, in fact, criminal investigations around the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good? And DOJ also has a credibility crisis. We've seen federal judges appointed by both parties find that DOJ has made untruthful representations to a court. That's a major issue. I expect Bondi to be questioned about that too.

BLITZER: It's going to be a lively, lively hearing. There's no doubt about that. And the Democratic members, including the ranking member, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, they're going to have some tough questions, no doubt about that.

All right, we're going to have live coverage of that coming up. Elie, thank you very much. Stick around. We're going to have more coverage. On all of this,

BROWN: We have an all-star group of reporters and analysts here in The Situation Room to break down Attorney General Pam Bondi's. appearance, CNN Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid, CNN Senior Justice Correspondent Evan Perez, CNN LEGAL ANALYST Carrie Cordero and CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig.

And just as I did that, it's starting. So, let's listen in.

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): A third of the American people live in a city, county, or state where the left wing leadership tells local law enforcement not to work with federal law enforcement.

Now, what does that mean in practice? Let's look at Abraham Gonzalez, who, on September 20th, 2023, was arrested by Border Patrol for illegally entering the United States, and, of course, the Biden administration released him into the country. Five months later, February 26th, 2024, Mr. Gonzalez is charged with assault.

Two weeks later, March 11th, 2024, he's charged with felony motor vehicle theft, stole a car. And on March 20th, 2024, nine days later, he's arrested by the Denver Police and placed in the Denver Justice Center.

Six days later, March 22nd, 2024, ICE sends a detainer notice to the Denver Justice Center saying this, if you're going to release Mr. Gonzalez, can you give us a heads up? Can you let us know maybe 48 hours before you're going to release this guy so we can come apprehend him there at the jail?

And, remember, a detainer is a final order of re removal from a court where this individual or this individual's committed some removable offense. But on February 28th, 2025, Abraham Gonzalez is released to the streets. In fact, we can put that up. I think you can see this released. We got the form from the Denver Justice Center.

What kind of inmate was Mr. Gonzalez for those 345 days that he was in the Denver Justice Center? We have that too. Violent to the staff, keep separate. So, this guy was so bad, you had to keep him away from other inmates. He had already assaulted some staff member, but Denver released this guy to the streets and let a -- instead of turning it over to ICE agents who would've come to the jail and arrested him there. And, of course, we all know what happens. When the officers did apprehend Mr. Gonzalez out on the street, he assaulted one of the officers.

This is what happens when you have a sanctuary jurisdiction. Right now in Minnesota, there are 1,360 detainer notices for violent offenders. Governor Walz and others have released 470 criminal illegal aliens back to the streets. In New York State, at 7,000. Nationwide, it's over 17,000 that we know of where a detainer was filed. Since President Trump's been in office over 17,000 times, a detainer was filed and those individuals were released to the streets instead of turned over to federal law enforcement. 17,864 times illegals who've been charged with the crime have been released to the streets, and thereby jeopardizing the safety of the public, the safety of law enforcement, and, of course, the migrant themselves, and, frankly, helping create the environment that results in the tragic deaths, like we saw with Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti.

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A few years ago, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said this, and in response to the State of the Union address, she said, the divide in America today is normal versus crazy, and it's true, because it's crazy not to have a border, which is what we had under the previous administration. It's crazy to abolish ICE, and it's crazy to release bad guys who are here illegally to the streets when, with one phone call, federal law enforcement will come to the jail and pick them up.

The mindset that says it's okay to release these guys is the same left wing mindset that thinks it's okay to weaponize government against your political opponents. And that is exactly what we had in the previous Justice Department. The Biden-Harris Department of Justice called parents domestic terrorists. The Biden-Harris Justice Department used FBI SWAT teams to arrest pro-life advocates. The Biden-Harris DOJ targeted traditional Catholics. The Biden-Harris DOJ pressured social media companies to censor Americans and the Biden- Harris Justice Department launched not one but two investigations into President Trump, spending over $35 million to try to bring down their political opponent.

To further this effort, they sought the phone records of over a dozen Republican members of Congress. Even the Democrats said this was wrong. They got bank records for scores of White House officials. They even paid at least one confidential human source $20,000 for information on President Trump. And, of course, while doing all this, they couldn't tell us who planted the pipe bombs, who leaked the Dobbs opinion and who put cocaine in the White House.

But thank goodness the American people saw through it all. Americans were tired of being target for their beliefs, tired of the lawfare, tired of the rampant crime throughout this country. And that's why they overwhelmingly elected President Trump. And what a difference a year makes. What a difference a year makes. Under Attorney General Bondi, the DOJ has returned to its core missions upholding the rule of law, going after the bad guys and keeping Americans safe. The Trump Justice Department has restored the rule of law. Murders are down nationwide by 20 percent, and D.C. violent crime is down by 28 percent. The federal surge in D.C. resulted in 8,000 arrests, the seizure of 800 illegal guns and the recovery of 16 missing kids.

The Trump Justice Department apprehended a suspect in the pipe bomb investigation, and they've arrested six of the FBI's ten -- our top ten most wanted fugitives in just one year. Of course, they arrested narco-terrorist Nicolas Maduro, and they seized a record number of drugs flowing into this country.

Trump Justice Department put an end to targeting Americans for their beliefs. Attorney General Bondi rescinded Attorney General Garland's anti-parent memorandum. Department of Justice ended the practices of using the FACE Act to target pro-life Americans. They've refused to tolerate attacks on places of worship and investigations of traditional Catholics that we saw in the previous administration.

On her first day, Attorney General Bondi disbanded the foreign influence task force that was pressuring social media companies to censor Americans. And the Trump Justice Department has ended lawfare. Under Attorney General Bondi, along with Director Patel, they've worked to expose the political nature of Arctic Frost and the Jack Smith investigations. They've turned over a hundred of pages of documents to Congress, and that's why we know, for example, that Mr. Smith paid at least $20,000 to some confidential human source. That's why we know that Jack Smith knew it was unconstitutional to seek to toll records from members. But since the litigation risk was low and because members would never find out about the subpoena until years later, they charged ahead and violated the Constitution.

The Trump Justice Department has changed DOJ policy to require prosecutors to tell judges if NDOs relate to members of the separate and equal branch of government, the Congress. And to top it all off, the Trump Justice Department opened an investigation into the conspiracy behind the Russia collusion hoax.

Justice Department has put common sense ahead of politics. They sued to keep boys out of girls' sports. They secured deals with universities to stop race-based admissions and anti-Semitic practices. Then after discovering rampant fraud in Minnesota, the Justice Department under the leadership of Attorney General Bondi has established a new national fraud division. In fact, I met with Colin McDonald who will head that division last week. I think he's going to do a great job.

There's a lot of work to be done in that area, but I want to thank the attorney general for her great work in the first year on the job, and I want to thank you for being here.

With that, I would yield to the ranking member for an opening statement.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman, and welcome Attorney General Bondi. You've got the best lawyer's job in America because your mission is justice and your clients are the American people.

But to promote justice for the people, you've got to listen to the victims, like the women seated behind you today. Those are just some of the hundreds of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's global sex trafficking ring who are demanding that the truth be told and are demanding accountability for the abusers who trafficked and raped them.

[10:15:12]

You still haven't met with these survivors.

So, with their permission, let me introduce to you the survivors and late survivors, family members who are present today. There's Teresa Helm, there's Jess Michaels, Laura Bloom McGee, Dani Bensky, Liz Stein Marina Lacerda, Sky and Amanda Roberts, who are the family of the late Virginia Giuffre, Sharlene Rochard, and Lisa Phillips.

Now, you're not showing a lot of interest in the victims, Madam Attorney General, whether it's Epstein's human trafficking ring, or the homicidal governmental violence against citizens in Minneapolis. As attorney general, you're siding with the perpetrators and you're ignoring the victims. That will be your legacy unless you act quickly to change course. You're running a massive Epstein cover-up right out of the Department of Justice. You've been ordered by subpoena and by Congress to turn over 6 million documents, photographs, and videos in the Epstein files, but you've turned over only 3 million. You say you're not turning over the other 3 million because they're somehow duplicative, but we know that there are actual memos of victim statements in there, and you also took down the Department of Justice's prosecution memo from 2019. So, it's clearly not all duplicative, but even if it were, why not release it? Just release all the duplicative stuff.

In the half you did produce, you redacted the names of abusers, enablers, accomplices, and co-conspirators, apparently, to spare them embarrassment and disgrace, which is the exact opposite of what the law ordered you to do. Even worse, you shockingly failed to redact many of the victims' names, which is what you were ordered to do by Congress. Some of the victims had come forward publicly, but many had not. Many had kept their torment private, even from family and friends. But you published their names, their identities, their images on thousands of pages for the world to see.

So, you ignored the law, and even with over a hundred thousand employees at your disposal, you acted with some mixture of staggering incompetence, cold indifference, and jaded cruelty towards more than 1,000 victims, raped, abused, and trafficked.

This performance screams cover-up. Convicted sex trafficker and groomer Ghislaine Maxwell opened the gates of hell to Virginia Giuffre and hundreds of other victims, as Virginia recorded in her remarkable book, Nobody's Girl. But when Maxwell was subpoenaed to come testify before Congress, you and Todd Blanche quickly moved her from a higher security prison to a minimum security camp in Texas where she's enjoyed five-star treatment, including catered meals, private gym time, and access to a therapy puppy, all because Todd Blanche, who's utterly failed to investigate the monstrous crimes of Epstein and Maxwell's co-conspirator, spent nine hours with Maxwell and satisfied himself that she would have nothing untoward to say about Donald Trump, which is your only real interest in the matter, based on institutional performance.

But abandoning victims and coddling perpetrators is what you do best. When the FBI opened a criminal investigation into the brutal killing in Minneapolis of Renee Goode, a poet and 37-year-old mother of three by Trump's masked paramilitary ICE agents, you shut it down. You claim you're investigating the cold-blooded murder of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the V.A. But how can we trust the administration when the president and Kristi Noem call Pretti a domestic terrorist, and Steven Miller called him a would-be assassin?

Not only do you refuse to share evidence with the state and local investigators and prosecutors in Minnesota, you have blocked their access to the crime scene and the evidence. How are you seeking justice for Marimar Martinez, the Montessori school teacher in Chicago who was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent, who bragged about it on text, or the family of Keith Porter, a father of two, shot and killed by an off-duty ice agent in L.A., or the family of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, shot and killed in Illinois minutes after he dropped his kids off at school? There's no sign of any movement at the Department of Justice. You even launched a criminal investigation into Renee Good's grieving widow.

[10:20:00]

How sick is that?

But it's even worse. You've turned the people's Department of Justice into Trump's instrument of revenge. Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time. He tells you to go after James Comey. Letitia James, Lisa Cook and Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve Board, and members of Congress, like Adam Schiff, Mark Kelly, Elisa Slotkin, Chrissy Houlahan, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, and Maggie Goodlander, to name a few, and you snapped to it. You replaced real prosecutors with counterfeit stooges who robotically do the president's bidding. Nothing in American history comes close to this complete corruption of the justice function and contamination of federal law enforcement.

And the good news is many serious lawyers at DOJ, including some of your own original appointees, have refused your lawless orders. Danielle Sassoon, your original pick for acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan resigned rather than follow your corrupt order to quash an indictment against Mayor Eric Adams as a political favor from Donald Trump. A Federalist Society member who clerked for Justice Scalia, U.S. Attorney Sassoon refused to participate in this blatantly corrupt scheme.

Her top assistant, Hagan Scotten, an Iraqi war vet and two-time Bronze Star recipient who clerked for Chief Justice Roberts and then Judge Kavanaugh, promptly resigned too, writing to your office, quote, I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion, but it was never going to be me.

You and the president nominated Eric Siebert, a 15-year career prosecutor, to be your U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. But after five months of investigating Letitia James and James Comey, he found no evidence to justify criminal charges. So, you forced him out. You replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, Trump's personal lawyer from the Mar-a-Lago documents case, who had zero prosecutorial experience and no qualifications. And then you were humiliated when a federal judge found that this corrupt appointment was blatantly unlawful and threw out Halligan's indictments entirely.

And grand juries of American citizens have repeatedly rejected your vendettas and baseless indictments brought by the hacks left at DOJ now with two different grand juries in Virginia voting down indictments against Letitia James in a single week. And just yesterday, another grand jury shut down your vendetta factory by rejecting indictments against the six members of Congress who had spoken out to remind all service members that they have a duty to refuse illegal orders. You tried to get a grand jury to indict six members of Congress who are veterans of our Armed Forces on charges of seditious conspiracy simply for exercising their First Amendment rights. I hope you'll heed the wisdom and the constitutional patriotism of those grand jurors and not try again by doubling down on that humiliation.

As your best lawyers are sacked for having participated in the January 6th case or just flee for the exits now, your new lawyers keep lying in court. In dozens of cases, they've been excoriated for lying to federal judges. Chief Judge Boasberg right here in D.C. suggested your Department of Justice perpetrated a fraud on the court. Other judges found your statements to be, quote, inexplicably misleading, patently uncredible, totally inconsistent, and so disingenuous that the court is left with little confidence that the government can be trusted to tell the truth about anything.

Now, as ranking member, I asked the chairman to add a few extra rounds of questions today because we each have five hours of questions, not five minutes, but we're stuck with five minutes. That's clearly insufficient to give voice to America's victims and survivors and to demand answers about all the corruption and cover-ups that we see at DOJ right now we've got just one round. So, we ask you politely, but firmly, Madam Attorney General, please do not waste one second of our precious time by evading questions, by changing the subject or engaging in personal attacks against members of Congress. We saw your performance in the Senate and we're not going to accept that. This isn't a game.

In the Senate, you brought something with you called a burn book, a binder of smears to attack members personally for doing the people's work of oversight. Please set the burn book aside and answer our questions. And when you hear us reclaim our time, that means it's time for you to stop speaking. We only have five minutes, so when we reclaim our time, that means you stop. And if you don't, we will ask the chair to stop the clock and let you go on his time.

The quality of justice in America depends on the character of our government. Please do your job and bring the Department of Justice back from the brink.

[10:25:01]

The survivors seated behind you and the American people watching everywhere deserve a Department of Justice worthy of its name.

I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

JORDAN: Without objection, all of the opening statements will be included in the record. We will now introduce today's witness, the Honorable Pamela J. Bondi has served as the attorney general of the United States since February 5th, 2025. She previously served in the office of the White House counsel, two terms as the Florida attorney general and spent more than 18 years as a prosecutor. We welcome our witness and thank her for appearing today.

We will begin by swearing you in. Would you please rise and raise your right hand?

Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and beliefs, so help you God? BONDI: I do.

JORDAN: Let the record show that the witness has answered in the affirmative. Thank you. You can be seated. And please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record in its entirely entirety. Accordingly, we ask that you summarize your testimony.

Madam Attorney General, you may begin.

BONDI: Thank you. Thank you Chairman Jordan, Ranking Member Raskin and distinguished members of this committee. Thank you for hosting me here today. I'm grateful for the opportunity to answer your questions, highlight the work of our department and discuss the most important topic of all, keeping the American people safe.

A little over a year ago, I was sworn into office as the 87th attorney general of the United States. I came into office with a goal of refocusing the Department of Justice on its core mission after years of bloated bureaucracy and political weaponization. The Department of Justice's core mission is to fight violent crime, protect the American people, and defend the rule of law above all else.

While our work is never done, we have made tremendous progress to make America safe again. In 2025, we saw the lowest murder rate in 125 years. That's nothing short of historic. If you compare '25 to '24, here's what you'll find. The murder rate is down 21 percent, robbery down 23 percent, carjacking down 43 percent, gun assault down 22 percent, assault, burglary, I could go on and on, crime is declining.

This did not happen by accident. The numbers tell an important yet straightforward story. President Trump has given us the resources, the support, and the leadership to protect the American people. President Trump's policies have saved lives. I cannot think of a policy outcome more important than protecting the lives of American citizens. Can you?

This trend has been especially clear in Washington, D.C., and in Memphis. These are two iconic American cities that spent years in the grip of horrific violent crime. The Department of Justice surged law enforcement resources and the results came quickly. Crime plummeted in both cities. And I want to make one point loud and clear, we achieved those results by working with Democratic mayors.

Public safety does not have a party registration. When your constituents call 911, they don't ask for political views of the responding officer. They ask for help. I have federal agents in each and every one of your districts. They're here to help and I am here to help.

Many cities and states have worked with us and taken advantage of our federal support. Some have not. Meanwhile, a few elected officials have declared that they are, quote, at war with the federal government and encouraged widespread obstruction of law enforcement. This has resulted in avoidable clashes on the streets, as you've all seen. We've seen rioters storming a Christian church. Citizens and law enforcement officers have both been endangered by reckless rhetoric. We have made dozens of arrest in and around Minneapolis so far, and many of them could have been avoided by simple compliance with federal law.

Of course, our efforts reach beyond our urban centers. We are striking crucial blows against terrorist organizations, such as MS-13, TDA, the Sinaloa Cartel, and Antifa. And as we sit here, I think you've seen the news this morning. The news is reporting that cartel drones are being shot down by our military.

[10:30:02]

That's what we all should care about right now, protecting America.