Congressional Hearing Erupts Into Clash Over Transparency, Foreign Gifts, and the Epstein Files

Washington — A tense Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday offered one of the most revealing glimpses yet into the widening rift between the Justice Department and congressional oversight, as Attorney General Pam Bondi repeatedly refused to answer direct questions on matters ranging from National Guard deployments to President Trump’s acceptance of a luxury aircraft from the Qatari royal family.

What began as a routine oversight session quickly escalated into a pointed confrontation between Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s ranking member, and Bondi, whose deflections and counterattacks often overshadowed the substance of the inquiries.

Durbin opened with a narrow procedural question: Was the attorney general consulted before National Guard units were deployed into U.S. cities whose governors had not requested assistance? Bondi declined to answer, stating only that she would not discuss “internal conversations with the White House.”

The refusal immediately set the tone.

“You won’t even say whether you talked to the White House about this,” Durbin pressed.

Bondi responded by accusing Durbin of hypocrisy over government funding and pivoted to crime statistics in Chicago — a shift the senator described as emblematic of an administration unwilling to articulate its legal rationale for domestic military deployments.

Durbin later told colleagues that the exchange reflected “where we are politically,” arguing that the Justice Department’s growing reluctance to engage with congressional oversight threatens long-standing norms surrounding transparency and executive accountability.

Questions Over a $400 Million Jet

The confrontation intensified when Durbin turned to a matter that has quietly circulated in Washington for months: President Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million luxury aircraft from the Qatari royal family for temporary use as Air Force One, a jet that is reportedly slated to become a permanent gift to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation.

Durbin noted that before her appointment, Bondi had performed legal work for the Qatari government — a relationship she had acknowledged in her confirmation hearing — and argued that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, exclusive authority over foreign gifts to U.S. officials.

Bondi again declined to discuss any legal guidance her department may have provided to the White House.

“I disclosed my role with Qatar,” she said. “I’m proud of my anti-human trafficking work. Beyond that, consultations with the Office of Legal Counsel are confidential.”

Durbin said Bondi had not responded to a letter sent five months earlier requesting the legal justification behind the acceptance of the jet.

The Epstein Files and Conflicting Statements

But the hearing’s most charged moments came when Durbin revisited Bondi’s public claim from earlier this year that an Epstein ‘client list’ was ‘sitting on my desk.’ The remark dominated headlines at the time, raising expectations that long-withheld documents might soon be released.

Under oath on Thursday, Bondi insisted the list “never existed,” asserting that her original comments were misinterpreted.

A whistleblower disclosure obtained by Durbin added new complexity. According to the senator, Bondi allegedly directed the FBI to review roughly 100,000 Epstein-related documents under a compressed timeline and to flag any materials referencing President Trump. The review, completed in July, resulted in an unsigned memo stating there was “no incriminating client list.”

Durbin asked why the memo lacked signatures and who ordered Trump-related records to be flagged. Bondi refused to answer on both counts.

The back-and-forth culminated in a sharply worded warning from Durbin: “Eventually, you’re going to have to answer for your conduct in this. You won’t do it today, but eventually you will.”

Partisan Fractures on Full Display

The hearing’s volatility drew in other committee members as well. Senator Marsha Blackburn interjected to dispute Bondi’s claim that she had failed to submit written requests regarding the release of Epstein flight logs, accusing Durbin of misrepresenting the record and attempting to avoid disclosure. Durbin countered that the committee’s work had been halted because Republicans invoked the chamber’s two-hour rule, not because he sought to block document production.

What emerged from the hours-long session was less a substantive debate over policy than a portrait of an administration that consistently rejects transparency, even on matters where the legal stakes are clear and the questions are straightforward. As Durbin repeatedly emphasized, the issues at hand — foreign gifts to a sitting president, the deployment of troops into states without gubernatorial consent, and the handling of sensitive criminal documents — touch on constitutional authority, ethics, and public trust.

The attorney general’s persistent refusal to provide direct answers, paired with frequent personal attacks on questioners, left many of those concerns unresolved.

For critics of the administration, the hearing underscores a larger pattern: when oversight pressures rise, explanations vanish. For supporters, the combative posture reflects an effort to counteract what they view as politicized investigations.

But for the public, the result is the same — lingering uncertainty about how decisions at the highest levels of government are made, who influences them, and what remains concealed behind executive privilege.