Former Attorney General Pam Bondi told House investigators she did not personally oversee the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, instead delegating that responsibility to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the man President Donald Trump now wants to lead the Department of Justice permanently.
The disclosure, contained in a transcript released Thursday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, lands squarely in the middle of what was already a difficult confirmation path for Blanche on Capitol Hill. Trump announced Wednesday night that he intended to formally nominate his former personal attorney to the Attorney General post. One day later, the committee published Bondi's own words placing Blanche at the center of a process that has drawn bipartisan criticism.
The timing could hardly be worse for the nomination, or more convenient for those who want answers about what happened to the Epstein files.
In her May 29 opening statement before the panel, Bondi was direct about who ran the show. She told lawmakers:
"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."
Bondi went further, telling members that Blanche served as the point person on training reviewers, making privilege determinations, and deciding what to withhold from public release. CNN and The Hill both reported that Bondi said Blanche "was in charge of the process and the entire release of the Epstein files."
That description puts Blanche's fingerprints on every major decision in a process that has produced botched redactions, exposing the identities of people described as victims, and left Democrats claiming millions of pages remain withheld.
Bondi's appearance before the committee had a complicated backstory of its own. In March, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina forced a 24-19 committee vote to subpoena Bondi. Five Republican members, Mace, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, joined with Democrats to compel her testimony.
That bipartisan push reflected genuine frustration among GOP members who had expected the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed on November 19, to produce a full accounting. The law required the DOJ to publish nearly all unclassified materials within 30 days. The department says it has published roughly 3 million pages. Democrats say millions more remain withheld.
Then Trump fired Bondi in April. After the firing, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer of Kentucky downgraded her appearance from a sworn deposition to an unsworn, unrecorded transcribed interview. The shift from sworn testimony to a less formal format raised its own questions about accountability, though it did not prevent Bondi from naming Blanche as the man responsible.
Adding another layer, Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, attended the interview alongside Comer and cut off questions about White House communications on the grounds of privilege. Bondi herself declined to discuss her conversations with Trump, including a reported exchange in which she told the president his name appeared in the files.
The pattern is familiar in Washington: officials who are willing to describe what happened in broad strokes but unwilling to discuss the specific communications that might explain why. Accountability, it seems, stops at the door of executive privilege whenever the questions get uncomfortable.
One of the more telling moments in the transcript involved the unsigned July 2025 DOJ-FBI memo that declared there was no Epstein "client list." That memo drew sharp skepticism when it surfaced, and investigators naturally wanted to know who was behind it.
Bondi said she could not recall who managed the memo.
She also referred questions about the Southern District of New York's Epstein-related work to Blanche and U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. In other words, nearly every substantive question about the Epstein files release led back to the same person: Todd Blanche.
For a nominee who needs Senate confirmation, that is a significant amount of unfinished business. Oversight Committee Democrats wasted no time saying the transcript makes Blanche's own testimony unavoidable. They signaled they could force a committee vote to subpoena him, the same procedural tool Mace used successfully against Bondi.
Even before the transcript dropped, Blanche's path to confirmation looked uncertain. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota told reporters it was "hard to say" whether Blanche could get through. Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, both members of the Judiciary Committee, said they were undecided.
Those are not encouraging signals for a nominee who needs every Republican vote he can get. The Epstein files issue cuts across party lines in a way few other topics do. Voters on the right who supported the Transparency Act did so because they wanted full disclosure, not a managed release with privilege claims and botched redactions. Voters on the left want the same thing, if for different reasons.
The political dynamics recall other recent episodes where high-profile figures faced intense scrutiny over their conduct in politically charged matters. Blanche now finds himself in a position where the very delegation Bondi described could become the central obstacle to his confirmation.
And the questions will not be limited to the files themselves. The broader issue, who decided what the public could and could not see, and on what authority, goes to the heart of whether the Transparency Act was honored in spirit or merely in letter. Publishing 3 million pages sounds impressive until the committee learns how many millions more were held back, and why.
The Oversight Committee now has Bondi's testimony pointing directly at Blanche. Democrats have the procedural tools to force a subpoena vote. Republican members who already broke ranks once to compel Bondi's appearance may be willing to do so again, particularly if their constituents keep asking why the Epstein files remain incomplete.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, will have to decide whether to move forward on Blanche's nomination while the House is still trying to get him to answer questions about the files release. That creates a collision course between the confirmation timeline and the oversight investigation.
In a political environment where even members willing to cross party lines on specific issues face intense pressure, the Blanche nomination may test whether Republicans who demanded Epstein transparency are willing to hold their own side to the same standard.
Bondi's transcript does not resolve the central question of what was withheld from the Epstein files or why. But it does resolve one question clearly: who was in charge. And the person she named is now asking the Senate to hand him the top law enforcement job in the country.
If Blanche ran the process, Blanche should answer for it, under oath, on the record, before any senator casts a confirmation vote. Transparency is not a campaign slogan. It is either the standard or it is not.