Pam Bondi Lies To Congress By Telling Them Maxwell Was Not Transferred To A ‘Lower-Level Facility’

Attorney General Pam Bondi falsely claimed in a sworn testimony to Congress that Jeffrey Epstein’s partner in child sex trafficking was not transferred to a “lower-level” prison, even though her Justice Department moved Ghislaine Maxwell to a “Club Fed”-type facility last summer. 

Days after meeting with Bondi’s deputy and former Donald Trump defence lawyer Todd Blanche, Maxwell was transferred from Tallahassee, Florida, to the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas. Tallahassee is a low-security prison.

FPC Bryan is an even more relaxed “minimum-security” facility and is typically meant for nonviolent, white-collar criminals in their final months of captivity.

Bondi, like all witnesses who appear before Congress, began her testimony by agreeing to answer questions truthfully “under penalty of perjury” at the start of her appearance before the House Judiciary Committee.

Department of Justice officials did not respond to HuffPost queries about Bondi’s false statement, which came amid angry testimony that featured attacks against questioners and a claim that questions about the now-dead Epstein were inappropriate given the strong performance of the stock market.

Bondi’s answer came in response to a question from Deborah Ross, a Democratic committee member from North Carolina, who asked her: “Does a convicted sex offender like Ghislaine Maxwell deserve special treatment in prison and special privileges in prison?”

Bondi answered: “I did not know she was being transferred, and she was not transferred to a lower-level facility.”

Later, she repeated twice, falsely, that Maxwell was transferred to a “same level” prison.

It is unclear how Bondi could not know about the transfer, given that the Bureau of Prisons comes under her agency’s purview, and her “same level” assertion is demonstrably false. Even in a low-security prison like Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution, inmates sleep in prison cells behind tall, razor-topped fencing. There is a section at Bryan with no fence at all, and inmates there sleep in dormitories.

One former inmate told HuffPost that Maxwell was afforded special privileges there beyond what the other inmates receive, such as access to her favourite beverage, grapefruit juice, the opportunity to play with puppies and assistance from the warden in helping fill out paperwork for her appeal.

Maxwell herself told a relative after her middle-of-the-night transfer that she was overjoyed with her new home.

“The food is legions better, the place is clean, the staff responsive and polite — I haven’t seen or heard the usual foul language or screaming accompanied by threats leveled at inmates by anyone,” she wrote a week after her arrival.

“I feel like I have dropped through Alice in Wonderlands looking glass. I am much, much happier here and more importantly safe.”

Bondi tried to prosecute former FBI director James Comey as part of the president’s continuing retribution campaign against his critics and political opponents for allegedly lying to Congress. That indictment, however, was dismissed because a federal judge found that the prosecutor Trump had handpicked for the assignment was illegally appointed.

It is unclear whether Bondi will ever face a consequence for Wednesday’s falsehood. The normal process for Congress to hold witnesses who lie to them accountable is to refer them to the Department of Justice, which Bondi runs, for prosecution.

Epstein, a longtime friend of Trump, died by apparent suicide in 2019 a month after he was arrested on child sex trafficking charges. Maxwell was arrested the following year, convicted at trial in late 2021, and in 2022 was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

On Monday, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself during a video-conference appearance before the House Oversight Committee. Her lawyer said she would be willing to honestly answer all their questions if Trump gave her clemency.

Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out pardoning Maxwell when asked over the course of a year.