The image was devastatingly powerful. With her back turned, US Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to so much as glance at the six victims of Jeffrey Epstein present in the audience during her House of Representatives hearing on Wednesday, February 11. At the request of Democrat Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the victims stood. "Raise your hand if you still have not been able to meet with this Department of Justice," Jayapal asked them. All six did. Bondi refused to apologize, remained silent, gave a slight shake of her head and resumed her offensive against each lawmaker who criticized her.
Several times, the attorney general deflected criticism by invoking her predecessor, Merrick Garland, noting that he was never questioned in this chamber during Joe Biden's presidency about the same Epstein case. Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a tireless advocate for the victims, put the responsibility back on her. "This is bigger than Watergate. This goes over four administrations. You don't have to go back to Biden. Let's go back to Obama. Let's go back to George Bush. This cover-up spans decades, and you are responsible for this portion of it."
Massie summed up a question widely shared in the United States about the judicial handling of the Epstein case, the multitude of errors made, and the long-standing impunity or leniency he appeared to enjoy. Epstein was the most striking face of a two-tier system of justice, one that provided a privileged path for the powerful. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate in February 2021, Garland was briefly questioned about this. "This is just horrendous. He obviously should have been prosecuted substantially earlier," he said. "But I do not know the why."
However, the first reports date back three decades. As early as 1996, Maria Farmer alerted New York police and then the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to the sexual violence she had suffered at the hands of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Her testimony was ignored. It was in Palm Beach, Florida, in the early 2000s that the authorities began to look into the couple's actions. The Palm Beach Police Department identified dozens of Epstein's underage victims, some as young as 14 years old. They had been lured to his residence under the pretext of providing "massages" that turned into sexual abuse. They were paid and psychologically manipulated to invite friends to follow the same path.