Attorney General Pam Bondi gave no direct answer Wednesday when pressed by Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) on whether the Justice Department has made any effort to question Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about his interactions with Jeffrey Epstein.

“Secretary Lutnick has addressed those ties himself,” Bondi replied.

Lutnick said on a podcast last year that he was disgusted by Epstein’s conduct and vowed in 2005 to never to be in the same room with him again. However, documents the Justice Department released last month show continued interactions between the two men in the ensuing years.

In addition, Lutnick acknowledged at a Senate hearing Tuesday that he and his family traveled in 2012 to the Caribbean island Epstein owned. Lutnick described a lunch with the financier, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida and who died by suicide in 2019 in a New York jail while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

Lutnick, despite the latest revelations, has faced few recriminations from Trump world over his connections with the late financier.

As Balint demanded that Bondi explain whether prosecutors or the FBI have talked with Lutnick or other Trump administration officials who had “ties” with Epstein, the attorney general challenged the lawmaker’s terminology.

“What does ‘ties’ mean?” Bondi replied. “Can you define that? Can you define ‘ties’?”

“I think Americans would be shocked to learn that you are not interested in talking with these officials who have ties to Jeffrey Epstein,” Balint replied as the attorney general tried to change the subject to the shooting of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont last month. “We now know that Lutnick went to Epstein’s island in 2012. How was that not a dealbreaker for the president?” the Democratic lawmaker asked.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday her department is actively probing individuals who might have conspired with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“We have pending investigations in our office,” she said during her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, when asked by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) if people would be indicted for ties to Epstein’s crimes.

It was not clear if Bondi was referring to work by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, where Bondi has directed U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to oversee investigations into connections between Epstein and prominent Democrats.

But members of both parties are clamoring for justice for Epstein’s victims, with many lawmakers counting on the release of the DOJ’s Epstein files to reveal more information about who should be implicated in wrongdoing.

Republicans have repeatedly suggested former President Bill Clinton should be further scrutinized, pointing to his long-standing relationship with Epstein as captured in photos Bondi’s agency made public in compliance with the law Congress passed last fall. Democrats, meanwhile, continue to scrutinize Trump’s relationship with the disgraced financier.

Neither man has been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s crimes.

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) on Wednesday demanded U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro preserve all evidence related to her unsuccessful effort to bring charges against him and five other Democratic lawmakers.

The request comes a day after Pirro’s office failed to obtain a criminal indictment against the lawmakers for putting out a video last year urging military personnel not to carry out illegal orders.

In a letter sent Wednesday to Pirro’s office, Abbe Lowell, Crow’s attorney, called the effort to indict Crow and the other Democrats involved in the video “a breathtaking and unprecedented level of prosecutorial overreach and misuse of power.” Lowell, who has represented a wide swath of President Donald Trump’s enemies in the last year, also put Pirro and other federal prosecutors “on notice” of the possible legal ramifications for failing to preserve evidence in the case or taking further action to pursue the case.

“Donald Trump’s abuse of America’s justice system is chilling and indefensible,” Lowell wrote in the letter. “What’s perhaps most surprising is not that your effort to secure a grand jury indictment failed, but that you even tried. Americans are paying attention to your gross abuses of power and demanding accountability.

Pirro’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pirro and other prosecutors in the Trump administration have on several occasions struggled to secure indictments against several of the president’s political foes, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. A grand jury rejecting indictments is an exceedingly rare outcome in federal cases, as they are tasked only with determining whether the Justice Department has brought a plausible case, although the Trump administration has faced an unusual number of failures in liberal areas like New York and the D.C. area.

Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, whom federal prosecutors also attempted to indict in relation to the video, decried the move from Pirro’s office at a Wednesday press conference, with Kelly calling it an effort “to abuse power in order to silence and intimidate anyone who disagrees with them.”

“The baseless and absurd allegations by Donald Trump, followed by your carrying out of the President’s political retribution campaign has already gone too far, and are evidence of yet another abuse of power directed at those who dare speak out and criticize this Administration,” Lowell wrote in the letter, which was first reported by CBS News.

Trump, in the wake of the video’s release in November 2025, repeatedly called for the lawmakers to face arrest and trial for what he called “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” The president later clarified that he was “not threatening death” against the Democrats.