This Pam Bondi photo captures the justice system’s contempt for Epstein’s victims | Opinion

If there’s a single photo that captures the contemptible way the Jeffrey Epstein victims have been treated by the justice system, it’s a picture of Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general.

If you haven’t seen the photograph taken Wednesday, it’s striking. Bondi is sitting in front of a group of more than a dozen victims. The women are standing up and raising their hands in response to questions from Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, part of a hearing on oversight of the Justice Department regarding the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files. One woman is looking directly at Bondi.

The U.S. attorney general — formerly the two-term attorney general of Florida from 2011 to 2019 — is just a few feet away, looking down at the table in front of her, her back to the women. It’s impossible to tell what was truly going through Bondi’s mind, but it looks as though she is determined to ignore them.

It’s a heartbreaking image for many reasons but this one in particular: Ignoring the victims in this terrible case has been the default response by authorities for years, in Palm Beach County and beyond. Until the Miami Herald published “Perversion of Justice” in 2018 — after spending months reporting about and listening to the victims — their accusations were mostly pushed aside or discounted. And that happened even as Epstein received break after break from a justice system that seemed loaded in his favor.

“To promote justice for the people, you’ve got to listen to the victims, like the women seated behind you today,” U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat, said to Bondi. “Those are just some of the hundreds of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s global sex trafficking ring who are demanding that the truth be told and are demanding accountability for the abusers who trafficked and raped them.”

Here we are, almost eight years after the Herald’s series spotlighted the victims and, incredibly, the full story contained in the Epstein files still has not been told. Bondi’s office has many documents from the federal investigation but many more still have not been released. Bondi has faced months of criticism for her lack of transparency on the files,

This case isn’t going away. And it cannot be ignored. There are an estimated 1,000 victims. We can’t ask any questions of Epstein — he died in jail in 2019 before going to trial. And his convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, invoked the Fifth Amendment during closed-door testimony earlier this month before congressional lawmakers.

The hearing on Wednesday — during which an obstreperous Bondi resorted to calling one member of Congress “a washed up loser” — included an effort by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, to push Bondi to turn around and apologize to the victims for what the Justice Department has put them through. Bondi refused, calling the effort “theatrics.”

She may be right. But Bondi should look in the mirror. Isn’t she the one who said on Fox News that she had the Epstein files right on her desk to review — only to say a few months later that the files didn’t exist?

There’s a lot to be worried about in the way the DOJ has handled the situation. The process of releasing the documents has been a mess. It’s been slow, even after President Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act — in November. The files released so far have exposed sensitive private information about victims despite redaction.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said Thursday they’ll hold a public hearing in Palm Beach — Trump’s backyard — on April 14 to continue the investigation into Epstein’s sexual abuse. Maybe that’s what it will take to dislodge all the records that Bondi’s department has in its grasp. As one look at that photo will show you, the victims can no longer be ignored.