Democratic Vermont Rep. Becca Balint suggested Tuesday that the Department of Justice tracked her activity in the Jeffrey Epstein files and attempted to use it against her.

Balint walked out of a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday after a tense exchange with Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi confronted her over a June 2025 vote against resolutions condemning antisemitism. Balint said on “The Lead with Jake Tapper” that she was caught off guard when Bondi referenced her prior vote against legislation adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.

“Well, in retrospect, I’m not surprised. At the moment, I was surprised,” Balint said when host Jake Tapper asked if she’s surprised Bondi brought the vote up.

Lawmakers introduced H. Res. 488 to condemn an antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colo., and to back stronger federal immigration enforcement to detain criminal illegal aliens. This, after Mohamed Soliman, an Egyptian national who overstayed his visa, allegedly carried out the attack while shouting phrases such as “Free Palestine” and “End Zionists.” Balint voted “present” on a separate measure, H. Res. 894, which denounced antisemitism nationwide, rejected all forms of terror, hate, discrimination and harassment against Jewish people, and reaffirmed support for the Jewish community.

Balint said the moment made more sense after learning DOJ officials logged members’ searches while they reviewed Epstein-related documents.

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“Now that we know that they were actually tracking our searches on the Department of Justice computers, and I want people to understand, when you go to try to search the Epstein files, there are only four computers for 435 members of Congress. They give you a discreet, well, they don’t give it to you. They log you in,” Balint said. “And even at the time, I thought that was very strange. And it’s clear to me that they were keeping track of what we were looking at. They knew I was in the files for Howard Lutnick. And the only conclusion that I can come to is that they were gonna use this as some ammunition against me because Howard Lutnick is also of Jewish descent.”

The DOJ publicly acknowledged it logs all searches made on its systems when lawmakers review unredacted Epstein files, saying the practice is intended to protect victims’ information and ensure sensitive data isn’t improperly released.

Balint said Bondi appeared more focused on scoring political points than answering lawmakers’ questions during a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing. (RELATED: ‘You Don’t Tell Me Anything!’: Pam Bondi Gets Into Shouting Match With Democrat Reps)

“But that is just a theory that I have based on how the hearing went and how she seemed to be using the so-called dirt that she dug up on all of us. I wish that she had spent more time preparing to answer our questions than try to find gotcha moments. But in terms of her accusation of me being anti-Semitic, it’s completely and totally outrageous,” Balint said. “And once again, she took up critical time in that hearing, attacking us instead of doing right by the survivors who were sitting there in the room with her, asking for her to apologize for the disastrous rollout of the files. And I think it has something to do with their surveillance at DOJ of what we were searching.”

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