Jimmy Kimmel isn’t holding back when it comes to Pam Bondi’s recent appearance before the House Judiciary Committee to answer for her controversial handling of the so-called Epstein files.
The embattled Attorney General faced hours of questioning from Republican and Democratic members of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, ultimately drawing sharp criticism for the fiery and pugnacious nature of her responses. The Jimmy Kimmel Live team put together a compilation of Bondi’s most contentious moments, which Kimmel proceeded to slice and dice.
“Today, it was Attorney General Pam Bondi’s turn in the hot seat,” he announced to his audience during Wednesday’s monologue. “This woman, she’s something. This is the kind of woman who, if you live next door to her, you’d move. You wouldn’t even argue with her, you just relocate and never go back to the block.”
After playing a clip from the hearing in which Bondi snarkily implies that North Carolina Congresswoman Deborah Ross is unduly fixating on her, to which Ross implies that, of course, she’s fixating on Bondi.
“That’s the whole point,” Kimmel joked, “Did she think she was invited to a mixer? I don’t know, it’s like speaking to a teenage girl…. That went on for, like, five hours. She’s shouting like a crazed Dance Mom, berating Democrats for giving her chubby daughter a low score.”
“The stakes were especially high for Pam because there are reports that Trump was complaining about her for not doing enough to punish his enemies or administer his enemas,” Kimmel joked.
The suggestion that Trump has been leaning on Bondi to prosecute his adversaries, regardless of their alleged criminality or culpability, hasn’t come from mere “reports.” Trump suggested it publicly in a September post to his Truth Social platform addressed to “Pam,” in which he named former FBI director James Comey, Democratic congressman and notable Trump critic Adam Schiff, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office sued Trump in 2022, alleging fraudulent business practices.
“They’re all guilty as hell,” Trump wrote. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
As the United States Attorney General, it’s Bondi’s responsibility to steward the release of millions of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The November passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, supported by the bipartisan team of Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), mandated the Department of Justice to make the emails, images, videos, and other files publicly accessible, but Bondi has faced heavy criticism for improperly redacting a volume of documents and continuing to withhold millions more.
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Not only did Jan. 30’s release of nearly 3.5 million files from the Epstein archive fail to redact the names and sensitive information relating to the millionaire financier’s alleged victims, but the names of several individuals “likely incriminated” in his alleged criminal enterprise were redacted.
“There’s nothing to defend here. This Department of Justice is hiding the names of people who are not victims. Why are they doing that?” Kimmel asked. “If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding names? That’s it. That’s the only question anybody needs to ask.”
Win McNamee/Getty
Trump’s interest in the Epstein files isn’t merely political, as the president is named in the full trove of documents “more than a million times,” according to Democratic representative Jamie Raskin.
When pressed on the subject, Trump has lately resorted to bitter ad hominem personal attacks, snapping at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins when she asked what he would say to Epstein’s survivors who haven’t yet gotten justice.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile,” he said. “I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face.”