Attorney General Pam Bondi showed up to a congressional hearing Wednesday carrying what can only be described as a surveillance receipt: a printed list of exactly which Epstein files Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal had searched through at the Justice Department.

Photojournalists at the combative House Judiciary Committee hearing captured images of Bondi holding a document labeled “Jayapal Pramila Search History,” listing at least eight different files from the DOJ’s Epstein records—complete with file numbers and descriptions of their contents.

THE DETAILS: Since Monday, the Justice Department has allowed members of Congress to visit its offices and search through a database of unredacted Epstein files. The setup, according to Rep. Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia, was designed for maximum difficulty: “four computers in a really tiny room,” unique logins and passwords for each lawmaker, no phones allowed, and notes restricted to standalone notepads.

“They were trying to make it as hard as possible for us to connect dots,” Subramanyam said. But apparently the DOJ was connecting its own dots—on the lawmakers themselves.

WHY IT MATTERS: Jayapal isn’t mincing words. “It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files,” she said in a statement to CBS News. “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.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called it an “outrageous abuse of power” and said he’ll ask the Justice Department’s Inspector General to investigate. “This is just getting Orwellian with these people,” he told reporters. “They better cut it out immediately, now that they’ve been caught.”

OF COURSE: The hearing itself was a mess. Jayapal pressed Bondi on two documents from her apparent search history—including an email exchange between Epstein and a high-profile Emirati sultan whose email address was blacked out, and another file labeled “Epstein victim list” that named dozens of people with almost no redactions. That second file has since been removed from the DOJ’s public database.

When Jayapal asked Bondi to apologize to survivors for failing to protect their personal information, Bondi’s response was to blame former Attorney General Merrick Garland and dismiss Jayapal’s questions as “theatrics.”

“I’m not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics,” Bondi said.

BOTTOM LINE: The Justice Department is supposed to be releasing Epstein files to increase transparency about a notorious sex trafficking operation. Instead, Bondi’s DOJ appears to be treating Democratic lawmakers like suspects—tracking their searches and bringing the receipts to public hearings as some kind of gotcha. Jayapal is now organizing a letter to investigate what she’s calling improper surveillance of Congress. The DOJ hasn’t commented.

So to recap: survivors’ names leaked, a sultan’s information protected, and the government is monitoring which elected officials are looking too closely at which files. Normal democracy stuff.