Republican Thomas Massie grilled Attorney General Pam Bondi after she appeared on Capitol Hill with insults ready to hurl at critics while refusing to answer questions about Jeffrey Epstein.
For hours, while being grilled by lawmakers, Bondi repeatedly flipped through her document while lashing out at lawmakers who dared to challenge her over the Justice Department’s mishandling of pedophile documents.
“Funny thing about Bondi’s insults to members of Congress who had serious questions: The staff literally gave her cards with individualized insults, but she couldn’t memorize them, so you can see her shuffling through them to find the flash insults that match the member,” Massie wrote on X Wednesday afternoon.
The Kentucky lawmaker and frequent Trump critic who forced the vote to release the Epstein files was one of the only GOP members to challenge Bondi on the Epstein probe.
Rep. Massie rips out the insults prepared by Attorney General Pam Bondi for the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. /X
Massie faulted Bondi for the Justice Department’s failure to redact the names and information of survivors while protecting alleged co-conspirators in the released files.
Bondi hit back at Massie with “you’re a failed politician” and “this guy has Trump Derangement Syndrome” in their combative exchange.
By the end of it, Massie could barely keep a straight face as she pushed Bondi to answer her. Speaking to reporters outside the hearing room moments later, he attacked her for using incompetence as a defense.
Throughout the hearing, the attorney general refused to answer Democrats’ questions and instead referred to talking points prepared to attack them.
It was similar to how other Trump Cabinet members and senior officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, have come forward to testify.
A close-up of the attorney general’s documents showed at one point that she had printed the search history of Rep. Pramila Jayapal since the Washington congressman went to review the undisclosed Epstein documents, indicating that the Justice Department was tracking lawmakers who saw the documents to use against them.
“It is totally inappropriate and against the separation of powers for the DOJ to be surveilling us while we search for the Epstein files,” Jayapal wrote on X. “Bondi showed up today with a burned book that contained a printed search history of the exact emails we were looking for. This is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop the spying on members.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi opens a link with a page titled
Bondi’s crackdown and attempts to bring down the Democrats began to become a pattern throughout the hearing.
When a Democrat’s questioning time was up, Bondi would ask the next Republican lawmaker if they could first take 20 seconds to answer their fellow Democrats. They all left her.
Then he rattled off insults from prepared pages or held up pictures of what he claimed were convicted undocumented immigrants in their districts.
Attorney General Pam Bondi with her file of memos and insults prepared as she appears before the House Judiciary Committee on February 11, 2026.]/ om Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
But her prepared burn book backfired at one point, and she was repeatedly jeered by Democratic lawmakers during the aggressive several-hour grilling.
When Bondi moved on to her list of insults at Rep. Becca Balint, she accused the Vermont lawmaker of not voting for a resolution amid rising anti-Semitism in the US.
“Oh, you want to go there, Attorney General?” the Jewish parliamentarian shouted angrily at her. “Are you serious, talking about antisemitism towards a woman who lost her grandfather in the holocaust? Really?”
The Attorney General sat with his arms crossed and a smug look on his face as Balint laid into her.
Other Democrats, predicting what was to come, invited Bondi directly to share their comebacks as their time for questioning expired.
“Let’s hear the research from the opposition,” Rep. Chuy Garcia said after calling Bondi “one of the worst attorneys general in history and a tool of Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda.”
Bondi went on to dramatically declare that Garcia was no longer running for office, but then admitted he didn’t know why as he consulted his notes.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz took it a step further, pulling out a sign at the end of his comments and mocking her.
“Because I’m curious and I’d like to see, I’d just turn to the Jared Moskowitz section of the binder,” he said with a smile. “I’m interested to see what personal he’s given my opposite, and since we’re in the Olympics, I’ll give him a grade.”
As he spoke, he opened a marker and said, “I just want to see how good it is, so give me your best.”
The attorney general accused him of mocking his Bible in his earlier comments after he held up Trump’s Bible while speaking, which he denied, but she didn’t want to indulge him any further.
“I want it from the burn book. I want it from the burn book. Which is the best? What do you have?” he continued.
As he spoke, he tapped his marker on the whiteboard as if preparing to write it down. When she refused to answer, he could be seen writing a large zero on it.