• House Speaker Mike Johnson broke with the Trump administration Thursday, calling the Justice Department’s tracking of lawmakers’ Epstein file searches inappropriate
• Attorney General Pam Bondi was photographed at Wednesday’s hearing with a printout labeled “Jayapal Pramila Search History” detailing which documents the congresswoman reviewed
• The controversy echoes a 2014 scandal in which the CIA was caught spying on Senate staffers investigating the agency’s torture program

WASHINGTON, DC (TDR) — House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered a rare rebuke of his own administration Thursday, saying the Justice Department’s tracking of lawmakers reviewing the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files was not “appropriate” — a break with the Trump DOJ that exposed deepening fractures over how the executive branch handles congressional oversight.

“I think members should obviously have the right to peruse those at their own speed and with their own discretion. I don’t think it’s appropriate for anybody to be tracking that. So, I will echo that to anybody involved with the DOJ.”

Johnson added a caveat that softened the blow, suggesting the surveillance was likely an oversight rather than deliberate. But the damage was already done — and the contradiction at the heart of the Republican response was already on full display.

How the “Burn Book” Surfaced

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The controversy erupted Wednesday during Attorney General Pam Bondi’s combative House Judiciary Committee hearing, when a Reuters photographer captured Bondi holding a printout labeled “Jayapal Pramila Search History.” The document cataloged which files Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) had reviewed during a visit to DOJ headquarters earlier that week.

Jayapal confirmed the printout was accurate.

“Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched. That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop this spying on members.”

The setup itself raised eyebrows. Members of Congress could only review the unredacted Epstein files on four DOJ-owned computers inside a small room at department headquarters. Lawmakers received individualized login credentials, could not bring phones or staff, and were limited to handwritten notes on standalone notepads.

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Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) described the arrangement bluntly.

“They set up four computers in a really tiny room and created a unique log-in and password for each one of us. They were trying to make it as hard as possible for us to connect dots.”

A DOJ spokesperson told multiple outlets that the department “logs all searches made on its systems to protect against the release of victim information.” But the department offered no explanation for why those logs ended up in Bondi’s hearing binder — organized by individual lawmaker and apparently prepared as opposition research.

The Jordan Contradiction

The sharpest contradiction came not from Johnson but from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), who presided over the very hearing where Bondi’s notes were photographed. Jordan spent the past two years treating DOJ surveillance of lawmakers as one of the gravest abuses of the Biden era. He called Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation — which subpoenaed phone metadata from more than a dozen Republican lawmakers — evidence that the department had been “weaponized.”

“It’s always worse than we thought. We know they spied on President Trump, then we learned it’s senators and the speaker of the House. Then we learn that they spied on me for 2½ years.”

That was Jordan in December 2025. On Thursday, when asked about the DOJ tracking which Epstein documents his colleagues searched, Jordan found no such alarm.

“It’s pretty rich. It’s pretty rich to hear the complaints after what the DOJ has done to Republican members of Congress under Jack Smith.”

The principle Jordan articulated for months — that the executive branch should not surveil the legislative branch conducting oversight — apparently applied only when the surveillance targeted Republicans under a Democratic administration. When the Trump DOJ tracked lawmakers reviewing Epstein files, Jordan told reporters he had “no issue” with it.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who previously championed a provision allowing lawmakers to sue the DOJ for up to $500,000 for accessing their phone records, was similarly selective. He said he wasn’t sure whether the Epstein search tracking was “out of line,” while maintaining that “getting my phone records was out of line.”

Jayapal noted the inconsistency directly.

“I’ve worked with several colleagues across the aisle, including Chairman Jordan, on FISA and surveillance. This would require consistency on the part of Republicans.”

Republicans Who Broke Ranks

Not all Republicans dismissed the controversy. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) — one of the original four Republicans who signed onto the Epstein Files Transparency Act discharge resolution — called the tracking “creepy” and said she confirmed it firsthand.

“I’m pretty tech-savvy. I’ve played around with the system. They’re tracking every file that we open, and when we open it. They’re tracking everything.”

Mace, who is running for governor of South Carolina, added that DOJ employees physically monitored lawmakers as they sat at the computers, and that individual logins tagged every document opened regardless of whether it was actually read.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), co-author of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, offered what he called the most “charitable” interpretation — that DOJ wanted to improve its system by tracking popular documents. But he said that charitable view collapsed when Bondi showed up with Jayapal’s search terms organized as hearing prep material.

“I think it’s kind of creepy that they were hoping to divine some line of attack based on our search histories.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) split the difference, saying the tracking didn’t have to be “nefarious” but expressing frustration with the department’s broader approach: “I don’t know what they’re doing looking at what we’re searching for,” he told The Hill. “Let’s just stop all the games. Let’s just get it all out.”

The 2014 Precedent

Multiple outlets noted that the controversy mirrors a 2014 scandal in which the CIA was caught spying on Senate Intelligence Committee staffers who were investigating the agency’s post-9/11 torture program. In that case, then-Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein delivered a 45-minute floor speech accusing the CIA of unlawfully searching a “walled-off” computer network that was supposed to be accessible only to committee staff.

CIA Director John Brennan initially denied the allegations, saying they were “beyond the scope of reason.” The CIA Inspector General later confirmed the agency had improperly accessed the committee’s computers. Brennan apologized.

The structural parallels are striking. In both cases, the executive branch provided a controlled computer environment for legislative review, then monitored what the reviewers were examining. In both cases, the agency being investigated had access to the investigators’ activity. And in both cases, initial denials gave way to grudging acknowledgment.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, drew the comparison explicitly and requested that the DOJ Inspector General open an investigation.

“Not only has the Department of Justice illegally withheld documents from Congress and the American people. Not only has Attorney General Bondi failed to bring a single indictment against a single co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. But now Bondi and her team are spying on Members of Congress conducting oversight in yet another blatant attempt to intrude into Congress’s oversight processes.”

What Comes Next

Raskin has formally requested a DOJ Inspector General inquiry. Jayapal is organizing a bipartisan letter demanding the department create an entirely new review process. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said he plans to have a “serious conversation” with Johnson about the matter, calling Bondi and the DOJ “partisan, pathetic, pitiful, petulant, petty foggers.”

The DOJ faces a February 15 deadline to provide Congress with a privileged log explaining its redaction decisions in the Epstein files — a requirement under the very law that Bondi’s department has been accused of failing to properly implement.

Johnson’s rebuke, however gentle, signals that the speaker recognizes the political cost of defending executive surveillance of Congress — even when the executive is run by his own party. Whether that recognition translates into institutional action or dissipates into another cycle of statements and forgotten promises will determine whether the episode is remembered as a turning point or a footnote.

When Congress investigates the investigators, who monitors the monitors — and does the answer change depending on which party controls the Justice Department?

Sources

This report was compiled using information from CNN’s reporting on Johnson’s rebuke of DOJ surveillance, The Hill’s coverage of bipartisan lawmaker outrage, NBC News’ reporting on congressional demands, PBS NewsHour’s hearing takeaways, ABC News’ coverage of the surveillance controversy, Axios’ reporting on congressional eruption, CBS News’ report on Bondi’s search history printout, official statements by Rep. Raskin and the House Judiciary Committee Democrats, the Daily Caller’s interview with Rep. Mace, Washington Examiner’s coverage of Democratic demands for investigation, NPR’s 2014 reporting on CIA surveillance of Senate staffers, and EPIC’s documentation of the CIA-Congress surveillance precedent.

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