Key House Democrats demand Bondi cease tracking Epstein files search history
A trio of House Democrats on Friday demanded the Department of Justice "immediately cease" tracking lawmakers' review of the unredacted files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Reps. Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal and Robert Garcia sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging the Justice Department to "develop a new protocol" that would allow members to "meaningfully" review the "fully unredacted documents."
Jayapal, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, has accused Bondi of "spying" on her search history when the congresswoman visited the DOJ earlier this week to view unredacted files on Epstein.
At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Bondi appeared to have printouts -- seen in photographs -- titled "Jayapal Pramila Search History." They included a diagram of several documents from the DOJ's files that Jayapal searched.
"Over a dozen Democratic Members of our Committees, as well as Representative Thomas Massie, have viewed these files and presumably also been spied on by DOJ. Your conduct is so outrageous that even the Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has condemned this practice," the letter states.
"The surveillance of Representative Jayapal's searches, and those of dozens of others, is just the latest effort by DOJ to interfere with Congress's oversight of the Epstein cover-up," the letter added.
The lawmakers request that a meeting be set up by Friday, Feb. 20, to discuss the surveillance of their searches in hopes of creating a new process for members to review the Epstein files.
"We also demand that you commit, in writing, to immediately ceasing tracking Members' review of the Epstein files," the letter states.
The Justice Department didn't immediately have a comment about the letter as of Friday evening.
Earlier this week, the department said in a statement, "DOJ logs all searches made on its systems to protect against the release of victim information."
The Justice Department did not offer any explanation for why Bondi had a printout of Jayapal's search history during Wednesday's hearing.
