Congress

Why Dems think they have the upper hand at Pam Bondi’s big Hill hearing

Published

5 months ago

February 11, 2026

Attorney General Pam Bondi will testify Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee amid a barrage of controversies that would ordinarily portend a dicey bipartisan grilling.

The nation’s top law enforcement officer is being scrutinized for the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, with files being released well past the statutory deadline and redactions appearing to defy the law’s requirements.

Bondi’s department is overseeing the prosecution of former Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro, who was forcibly removed from his country by U.S. troops in an operation that has prompted a flurry of legal questions. Her agency is also being pressured to investigate and bring charges against the federal agents who fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.

“It’s very hard to narrow down all of the lawlessness and gross abuse of power that this Department of Justice has engaged in in just one year,” said Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), a member of the committee, in an interview. “She’s been trying to avoid us, but she can’t avoid us any longer.”

But other than Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who said he plans to pepper Bondi over the Epstein saga, Republicans on the panel don’t appear to be clamoring to challenge Bondi on any of it.

Asked his priorities for the hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan in an interview said he wanted to hear about the newly appointed senior DOJ official focused on fraud, the now-defunct investigation into President Donald Trump and “the good work they’ve done on just regularly prosecuting bad guys.”

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) said he intends to ask Bondi about efforts to overhaul election law, while Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) suggested he would question her about the department’s work to protect what he called “the rights of parents.”

“It’ll be fun,” Kiley added.

It’s not unusual for Cabinet officials to confront a hospitable audience when the majority shares the party affiliation of the administration in power, but Democrats think the stack of high-profile dramas encircling Bondi could give them a unique opportunity — namely by drawing out the GOP’s anticipated silence on the hot-button issues and the attorney general’s expected refusal to engage in Democratic questioning.

“The Department of Justice has been found to be lying by federal courts across the land — they have withheld evidence, they have misled the court, they’ve shown spectacular disrespect for the rule of law and the integrity of the courts,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, in an interview. “So, I think as little respect as they have for the courts, they probably have less for Congress.”

But, Raskin said, Democrats plan “to engage in some exchanges that will spotlight some of the worst depredations of the Trump Justice Department, and we hope the mobilization of public opinion will allow us to make some progress in some areas.”

He told reporters that Democrats will ask about the DOJ’s process for releasing the Epstein files that “produced such flawed results” in its production of the materials.

Democrats also say they’re ready for Bondi to deflect member questions by personally attacking lawmakers.

When she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October, she told Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to “apologize” for trying to impeach Trump and accused Sen. Dick Durbin of being unwilling “to protect your citizens” when the Illinois Democrat asked about National Guard deployment to his state.

She also punted a question on Epstein back to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) over campaign donations of which there is no record with the Federal Election Commission, then levied a bizarre charge that he had pushed legislation that would subsidize his wife’s company.

“We’ve all noticed that at prior hearings, when she’s afraid to answer a question, she attacks the members of Congress,” Rep. Ted Lieu of California, a member of House Democratic leadership who also sits on the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. “So if she starts doing that, you know she’s afraid to answer a question, and she’s engaged in a cover-up, so the American people will be able to see what she does on Wednesday.”

Bondi could go after Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a longtime vocal foe of the Trump administration who is now running for governor and has drawn past scrutiny for an alleged connection to a suspected Chinese spy. House Republicans removed him from the Intelligence Committee, but the Ethics Committee abandoned its investigation into the matter in 2023.

It’s possible Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee offer veiled criticism of the Justice Department’s immigration policies following the violent confrontations in Minnesota. House Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) said at a hearing with some of the Trump administration’s top immigration officials Tuesday that “when officials or elected leaders rush to conclusions about law enforcement or their fellow Americans, public trust suffers.”

But most of the Republicans who sit on the House Judiciary dais are staunch Trump loyalists unlikely to be out of lockstep with Bondi. Massie, who Trump is now trying to primary out of office after multiple defections, could be the sole exception.

“It probably wouldn’t surprise you or her that it’s probably going to be Epstein-focused,” Massie said of his plans for questioning Bondi. But he wouldn’t offer any previews: “I don’t want her to know.”

Congress

Online safety coalition urges House to reject KIDS Act compromise

Published

2 minutes ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A coalition of children’s safety advocates is urging House leaders to reject a bipartisan compromise on online safety, arguing it weakens protections for minors and lets tech companies avoid accountability.

In a letter first shared with Blue Light News, the groups urged Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) to oppose the bipartisan package — known as the KIDS Act — ahead of a potential House vote as soon as next week.

Led by Design It For Us, ParentsTogether, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and the Young People’s Alliance and signed by 90 other organizations, the coalition said the deal struck by Energy and Commerce lawmakers fails to address its chief concern: the omission of a “duty of care” provision that would require tech companies to mitigate harms they know their products cause to young users.

“The Committee rejected our concerns and opted to negotiate a version that let Big Tech off the hook and rush this legislation to the House floor,” they wrote.

The warning comes after the groups previously raised similar concerns when the committee approved a version of the KIDS Act along party lines in March.

The Senate’s version of the Kids Online Safety Act — an expected component of Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s ongoing negotiations over online safety regulations — includes the “duty of care” language. Some House members have raised concerns that it could incentivize social media platforms to overzealously censor content to avoid litigation.

“It pains us that, given how hard we have fought for a strong federal solution to online child protection and for a strong bill to move to the House floor, the KIDS Act is the bill the House is championing,” they wrote, urging lawmakers to oppose the bill.

Parents RISE, a coalition of parents who have experienced child loss or mental health difficulties due to tech platforms, sent a second letter to the same parties laying out similar qualms. “We did not create Social Media Victims Remembrance Day so that our children’s names could be used as cover for a bill that protects the very companies that harmed them,” they wrote.

Tech industry group NetChoice has come out against the KIDS Act over censorship concerns.

Spokespeople for Johnson, Jeffries, Guthrie and Pallone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congress

Leon Black tells House Oversight he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes

Published

17 minutes ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Leon Black told the House Oversight Committee on Friday that he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes during the years he paid the convicted sex offender tens of millions of dollars, according to a copy of the billionaire investor’s prepared remarks.

“I don’t understand why people — including members of this committee — would accept baseless speculation about me without regard to the facts and spin such ugly and vicious narratives that are demonstrably false,” Black said in his opening statement, obtained by Blue Light News.

Lawmakers, however, filed into Black’s scheduled transcribed interview Friday morning already suspicious of their witness. House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters he believed Black’s testimony had “the potential to be the most groundbreaking” of anything the panel has heard so far in its long-running Epstein investigation.

Comer also said the committee had reason to believe that Black had signed nondisclosure agreements with some of Epstein’s victims.

Black, a co-founder of Apollo Global Management, did acknowledge in his prepared remarks that he was aware of Epstein’s 2008 sex crime conviction at the time of their association but that “Epstein told me that it was an isolated incident resulting from a fake ID.”

“Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others,” he continued. “I wish I had not.”

Black also told lawmakers that he knew Epstein for 18 years before he began paying him in 2013 for tax and estate planning. At that time, Black said, he saw Epstein surrounded by some of the world’s most powerful people — among them former President Bill Clinton, tech mogul and philanthropist Bill Gates and then-White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler.

And he appeared to suggest that he saw Epstein as legitimate, in part, because of those who chose to associate with him: “Epstein appeared to me and to many others to have redeemed himself: [H]e served on several prestigious boards, hobnobbed with leading people in academia, the arts, business executives, and numerous world leaders.”

Clinton and Gates have already spoken with Oversight investors about their ties to Epstein; Ruemmler has agreed to sit for an interview with the panel in July.

Black said he ultimately fired Epstein in 2018 “after growing tired of his relentless pursuit of more and more money from me for professional services, his mistruths and misrepresentations … and his failure to repay most of a $30 million demand loan that I had made to him.”

He also acknowledged the allegations of sexual misconduct that have been levied against him in litigation, which he called “demonstrably baseless” and “entirely fabricated.”

In one recent case, the judge found that the law firm that had been representing Black’s accusers and the plaintiff in the case were “engaged in serious, sanctionable misconduct in this case.” However, the lawsuit — brought by a woman who claimed to have been raped by Black when she was 16 — was allowed to proceed.

“There are numerous allegations of real abuse by women — by survivors — against Mr. Black,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, told reporters Friday morning.

Congress

Capitol agenda: House GOP agenda gets tenuous Trump lifeline

Published

4 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump handed Speaker Mike Johnson a lifeline Thursday to get Republicans’ agenda back on track next week.

But hard-liners’ festering discontent over Trump’s stalled election bill could jam the chamber again.

For now, members plan to return Monday and press forward on a long list of major legislation before Independence Day recess, including fiscal 2027 funding bills, the annual defense policy bill, a kids online safety bill and negotiations for a third reconciliation measure lawmakers want to stuff with party priorities.

Trump Thursday instructed the band of GOP hard-liners to lift their procedural block of House floor business. Still, some are doubling down in new ways.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who engineered this week’s impasse through a blockade of procedural votes, said if leaders want her support to advance legislation next week, they’ll need to attach the SAVE America Act to the defense policy bill.

Senior House Republicans feel joining the bills would kill the must-pass defense legislation that typically wins bipartisan support. And Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday that attaching the two measures would also sink the defense bill in the Senate.

Meanwhile, another hard-liner, Rep. Chip Roy, responded to Trump’s call to lift the House gridlock with a new list of legislative demands for House leaders.

Johnson, for his part, focused on the positive. He told reporters at the Capitol after meeting Trump that he and the president are “on exactly the same page” about stopping “any blockade in the House.”

He also said Congress would be transmitting the housing affordability bill it cleared this week to the White House, after the president abruptly reversed course Wednesday on a signing ceremony for the bill and demanded Senate passage of the controversial election overhaul first.

What else we’re watching:

— HISPANIC CAUCUS BRACES FOR CHAIR’S SUCCESSOR: Hispanic Caucus members are still reeling from Chair Adriano Espaillat’s electoral defeat this week. But they’re warily preparing to welcome his successor — with some conditions. Darializa Avila Chevalier — a Democratic Socialist who ousted Espaillat in New York’s primary Tuesday, said Thursday in a statement she plans to join the CHC when she gets to Congress, which is all but guaranteed in November.

— COMER TO GRILL EPSTEIN-LINKED INVESTOR: Investor Leon Black will speak to House Oversight Friday for an interview Chair James Comer has called “the big one” in his panel’s investigation of the Jeffrey Epstein case. “It’s going to be hard for him to deny the questions we’re going to ask,” Comer told reporters this week.

Meredith Lee Hill, Jordain Carney, Riley Rogerson and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.