US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who spent four hours answering questions at a congressional hearing on the Jeffrey Epstein case, refused to apologize to the financier's victims present in the room and instead demanded that Democrats apologize to President Donald Trump, The New York Times reports.
Democrat Jamie Raskin criticized Bondi's actions regarding the release of the Epstein files.
“You are siding with the criminals and ignoring the victims“, he said. “This will be your legacy if you don't change course quickly. "You are leading a massive cover-up of the Epstein case, right from the Justice Department," the Democrat added.
Democrat Pramila Jayapal said that in some cases, the identities of victims who should have been hidden were revealed. She asked the attorney general to apologize to the victims for the way the Justice Department handled the release of the documents. Bondi called Jayapal's criticism "theatrical."
She then attacked several Democrats, including Raskin and Jerrold Nadler, for leading the impeachment inquiry into Trump.
"Have you apologized to President Trump?" the prosecutor asked. "You're sitting here attacking the president, and I'm not going to tolerate that," she said, calling Raskin a "useless lawyer." Epstein's leaked files mention Trump at least 4,500 times, as well as his private resort, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach. Epstein had known Trump for many years. In 2002, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years, and in 1992, NBC reported on a party at his Mar-a-Lago estate that Epstein attended. The current president says he banned Epstein from visiting his Mar-a-Lago estate in the mid-2000s because he was "the king." young women who worked at the spa with the pool.
In 2004, the businessmen fell out over a disagreement over a Palm Beach real estate deal. Trump now denies rekindling his relationship with Epstein after the dispute.