By Emily Rodriguez
The Center Square

Members of the U.S. House Judiciary questioned U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday on the Department of Justice’s mission and programming.

Under Bondi’s leadership, the DOJ reduced crime rates, seized illegal guns, arrested high-profile fugitives, combatted illegal vape sales, confronted domestic terrorism, and established a National Fraud Enforcement Division, she said.

With issues of fraud in Minnesota, U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., asked if similar fraud had been discovered in California.

“It’s not only rampant in Minnesota, it’s rampant throughout this country. Much of it is in California, as you know, and in other places,” Bondi said. “It’s taxpayer dollars that have been stolen from the American people. We are committed to recovering that money and holding those people accountable.”

Bondi faced criticism for her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, including the release of victim names and the failure to prosecute Epstein’s co-conspirators.

“It took an act of Congress for you to finally release part of the Epstein files, and when you did, you included personal information about the victims while protecting the names of abusers. None of the perpetrators have been brought to justice,” said U.S. Rep. Jerold Nadler, D-NY.

“We’ve released more than 3 million pages, including 180,000 images, all to the public, while doing our very best in the time frame allotted by the legislation to protect victims. And if you brought us a victim’s name that was inadvertently released, we immediately redacted it,” Bondi said.

U.S. Rep. Henry Johnson, D-Ga., asked Bondi if attorneys were tasked with identifying and scrubbing Donald Trump’s name from the Epstein files.

“I believe his name has appeared countless times in the document,” Bondi replied.

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked Bondi about former CNN anchor Don Lemon’s involvement with the church protest in St. Paul, and Bondi confirmed Lemon was actively involved in orchestrating the protest.

“They had an operation called Operation Pull Up. They said they were gearing for a resistance. They met in a parking lot, and they caravanned to a church on a Sunday morning when people were worshiping together,” Bondi said.

Throughout the hearing, multiple Democrat representatives complained that Bondi did not answer all questions with on-topic answers.

“They’re not gotcha questions. They’re actually basic questions about how the Department of Justice functions and the unwillingness of this attorney general to answer them in good faith,” U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., said.