Lawmakers confirm bipartisan effort to impeach Trump's AG over redactions in Epstein files
There is already a bipartisan push to impeach Attorney General Pam Bondi over her apparent flouting of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, according to one of the bill's authors.
During a Friday interview on CNN, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told host Kaitlan Collins that he knew something was wrong with Friday's promised release of documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein's two federal investigations when he saw the scope of the Department of Justice's (DOJ) redactions. While Khanna maintained that neither he nor the bill's chief co-sponsor, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), had any issues with redacting information to protect Epstein's surviving victims and their families, he took umbrage with the DOJ's total omission of the 119-page grand jury document that preceded Epstein's "sweetheart deal" in 2008 and the 82-page document explaining why he should be charged.
"Neither of them are in the release," Khanna said. "And to the extent the drafters' intent of a law matters, Thomas Massie and I explicitly drafted it to cover those two documents. And you had three federal judges look at our law and say, 'release everything in terms of the grand jury.' You had judges saying, 'release it.' And then the Department of Justice is redacting it."
When Collins observed that the DOJ "made a pretty big show" of obtaining the 119-page grand jury document — which has been completely redacted from start to finish — Khanna said that redaction was "the red flag where I knew something was wrong."
"One of the things, unfortunately, we learned is that there are 1,200 survivors, according to the DOJ itself," Khanna said. "Think about it: If there are 1200 survivors, there was more than one person committing this abuse. And what I thought should not be redacted is information about politicians or powerful people who may have been implicated. The whole point, again, if you read the law, is to say embarrassment or reputational harm cannot be a reason for redaction. And yet it seems for everything that they've redacted and not produced that they are trying to protect people. They don't want people to be held accountable. And that's exactly what the survivors want."
At that point, Collins asked the California Democrat if he felt Bondi should be impeached over the redactions. Khanna confirmed that both he and Massie are "drafting articles of impeachment and inherent contempt," prompting Collins to say, "wow."
"We haven't decided whether to move it forward yet, but we're in the process of doing it," he said. "... The issue for her is not, are there going to be 212 Democrats who would support it. The issue for her is how many Republicans and MAGA supporters would support it."
"So my hope — because my hope has never been about Pam Bondi getting justice or Todd Blanche getting justice — my hope is she looks at this, she looks at the outrage that MAGA has, she looks at the disappointment that the survivors have, and she makes a decision over the next two weeks to actually start releasing these documents," he added. "Because she may lose more Republicans in the House than she anticipates."
Watch the segment below:
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