{"id":18871,"date":"2026-02-11T18:01:55","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/massie-becomes-first-republican-to-spar-with-bondi-during-house-judiciary-hearing\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T18:01:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:01:55","slug":"massie-becomes-first-republican-to-spar-with-bondi-during-house-judiciary-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/massie-becomes-first-republican-to-spar-with-bondi-during-house-judiciary-hearing\/","title":{"rendered":"Massie becomes first Republican to spar with Bondi during House Judiciary hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Rep. Thomas Massie was the first and so far only Republican to spar with Attorney General Pam Bondi during her hearing Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n<p>The Kentucky lawmaker asked Bondi about redactions in the Jeffrey Epstein files that failed to comply with the law Massie helped shepherd to passage last year. He pointed to instances where the names of victims are not shielded but the name of Les Wexner, a businessman and client of the convicted sex offender, is blacked out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho\u2019s responsible?&#8221; Massie asked. &#8220;Are you able to track who in the organization made this massive failure and released the victims\u2019 names?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bondi replied that Massie, who has become a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, a &#8220;failed politician&#8221; and a &#8220;hypocrite.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithin 40 minutes, Wexner\u2019s name was added back in,\u201d Bondi said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithin 40 minutes of me catching you red handed,\u201d Massie responded.<\/p>\n<p>Bondi then accused Massie of having \u201cTrump derangement syndrome&#8221; and refusing to press for justice for Epstein&#8217;s victims during previous administrations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is bigger than Watergate,\u201d Massie told Bondi. \u201cThis cover-up spans decades, and you are responsible for this portion of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wexner has said he severed ties with Epstein in the aughts, around the time of an earlier investigation against the late financier and when Wexner realized that Epstein has illicitly taken money from him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner\u2019s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was being viewed as source of information about Epstein and was not a target in any respect,&#8221; a legal representative for Wexner said in a recent statement. &#8220;Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rep. Thomas Massie was the first and so far only Republican to spar with Attorney General Pam Bondi during her hearing Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee. The Kentucky lawmaker asked Bondi about redactions in the Jeffrey Epstein files that failed to comply with the law Massie helped shepherd to passage last year. He pointed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}