WATCH: Durbin and Bondi spar over alleged Epstein client list

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday about a so-called “client list” of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Department of Justice said this summer that Epstein did not keep a list of clients for his underage sex trafficking ring. That contradicted comments Bondi made earlier this year that suggested the list was "sitting on my desk right now to review."

In Tuesday's hearing, Durbin and Bondi went back and forth on whether such a list ever existed and whether the FBI reviewed records or flagged files that referenced President Donald Trump at Bondi’s request.

Bondi said there was no client list, and Durbin's reference to her comments earlier this year that the list was on her desk were taken out of context.

“Eventually you're going to have to answer for your conduct in this, and you won't do it today,

but eventually you will,” Durbin told Bondi.

Bondi suggested that when Durbin chaired the Senate committee in the previous administration, he refused to release flight logs from Epstein’s plane.

That back and forth spilled over into the committee after Durbin alluded that Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., was the reason the flight logs weren’t released. Blackburn said she’d submitted the request several times in writing, as Durbin asked. Durbin argued that he hadn't received them.

“We'll submit, once again, the information to you. We've done that several times, but we'll be happy to once again send it to you. I think your staff doesn’t show that to you,” Blackburn said.

The oversight hearing, focused on the Department of Justice, comes on the heels of a number of controversial decisions from the agency. That includes the indictment of former FBI Director James

Comey, which came days after Trump directly called on Bondi in a social media post to prosecute Comey and other perceived political foes.

Ahead of Bondi’s testimony, more than 282 former DOJ employees wrote a letter urging Congress for more oversight due to the “degradation” of oaths to the Constitution and to upholding the law under the Trump administration.

“Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing,” the letter read.

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