members Congress They called for investigations after the Department of Justice was found to have created records of their investigative activities. Jeffrey Epstein.
Photographs taken by Reuters during a congressional hearing on Wednesday show the US attorney general, Pam Bondicontains a document titled “Jayapal Pramila’s Search History,” listing files accessed by Democratic US Rep. Pramila Jayapal during her review of Epstein’s materials.
Access to unredacted Epstein materials was made available to lawmakers earlier this week under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Many members of Congress are demanding an end to the tracking, accusing the Justice Department of violating the separation of powers.
“It’s an outrage [the justice department] tracking members’ investigative actions,” said Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who announced he would ask the Justice Department’s inspector general to open an investigation into what he called “this egregious abuse of power.”
Raskin explained A review process is designed for surveillance from the outset. Members of Congress who want to examine the files must go to a Justice Department annex, sit at one of four department-owned computers, navigate what he calls “a clumsy and convoluted software system” and read documents while Justice Department staff look over their shoulders.
“It’s the perfect setup [the justice department] Members review, monitor, record and log up every document we choose to spy on,” Raskin said in a statement. “Today, Attorney General Bondi’s ‘burn book’ photos confirmed my suspicions.”
The document Bondi brought to the hearing was designed to help the congresswoman anticipate her questions from Jayapal based on which files she reviewed — information Raskin acted as attorney general using “for her embarrassingly controversial purposes.”
In a letter to lawmakers Obtained by NBC Newsthe Justice Department said it “maintains a log of the dates and times of all member reviews.” But the extent of that tracking — including specific search queries and documents accessed — only became clear when Bondi appeared at Wednesday’s surveillance hearing.
“Bondi showed up today with a burn book containing a printed search history of the emails I searched,” Jayapal wrote on X. “This is outrageous and I want to continue this and stop this spying on members.”
Jayapal termed the practice as “totally inappropriate and against separation of powers [justice department] to monitor us while we search the Epstein files”.
Representative Suhas Subramaniam of Virginia wrote on social media: “As I said yesterday, [justice department] Keeping a history of all the files we are viewing. Now we know why.”
The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
Representative Nancy Mays, a South Carolina Republican and one of the party’s most vocal critics of the Epstein files, called it “creepy” and detailed the review process.
“There are one or two people from there [justice department] You’re being monitored while you’re sitting at those computers,” Mace told NPR. “A technician logs you into a computer. They log you into the computer as they give you your own identity. They’re tracking all the documents that members of Congress open, and they’re tracking everything you do in that room.
Jayapal told reporters that he had discussed the matter with House Speaker Mike Johnson: “I think there is a bipartisan agreement that we can review those files without the Justice Department monitoring us.”
When asked by reporters about the tracking, Johnson called such practices “inappropriate” if they occurred, though he declined to directly criticize the Justice Department, saying he had not personally seen the surveillance reports and did not want to comment on a “baseless allegation.”
Raskin, for his part, cited a number of failures: the hiding of records of violations of the law, zero criminal charges against Epstein’s associates, and monitoring of members who are now conducting surveillance.
“Let’s use this disgraceful revelation about the Attorney General’s work ethics to do a complete reset on the Epstein cover-up,” he said.
