BURSTDemocratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) says Attorney General Pam Bondi’s accusation at a hearing Tuesday that he accepted campaign contributions from Reid Hoffman, a major Democratic donor who knew convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, “simply isn’t true.”
Bondi during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing accused Whitehouse of accepting money from Hoffman, calling him “one of Epstein’s closest confidants” after the Democratic senator asked her whether the Department of Justice had investigated suspicious activity reports for financial transactions related to Epstein.
When Whitehouse asked how many of the “hundreds” of suspicious activity reports related to Epstein’s accounts were reviewed under Bondi’s leadership, she tried to turn the tables back on the Senate Democrat.
“You took money, I believe — did you? — from Reid Hoffman, one of Epstein’s closest confidants not only once but twice in 2018 and 2024, if that’s correct,” Bondi said during her testimony before the Judiciary panel.
Whitehouse didn’t immediately respond but had his staff later review his campaign finance reports and did not find any evidence that Hoffman had contributed to him.
"Her suggestion that I had received campaign contributions from this alleged Epstein close confidante simply isn‘t true. All they had to do was go and look at my public campaign finance reports and see that this individual appears on them nowhere,” Whitehouse told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an interview late Tuesday.
"All they had to do was go and look at my public campaign finance reports and see that this individual appears on them nowhere,: Whitehouse added. "So she went off into the salacious discussion, she went off into the false accusations about campaign contributions."
Whitehouse left the room during Bondi’s testimony but then returned toward the end of the hearing in an effort to correct the record and dispute the attorney general’s claim.
But the presiding chair, Republican Sen. Ashley Moody (Fla.), refused to grant Whitehouse’s request for a point of personal privilege to correct the record, even though he’s the second-most-senior Democrat on the panel.
“She said that I received multiple contributions from a guy named Reid Hoffman. So we asked. I never received a contribution from Reid Hoffman,” Whitehouse told The Hill, referring to Bondi.
“She’s certainly misleading the committee,” Whitehouse said of the attorney general.