Attorney General Pam Bondi faced questions about her leadership in the Department of Justice at a Senate Hearing.
Mary Louise Kelly, presenter:
Attorney General Pam Bondi was today in the Capitol conducting tests before the legislators of the Senate. It was a combative audience. Bondi defended his leadership in the Department of Justice and dismissed the accusations that he has used the Department of Justice as a weapon to persecute the alleged enemies of President Trump. The NPR justice correspondent, Ryan Lucas, was looking. He is with us now. Hi Ryan.
Ryan Lucas, byline: Hello.
Kelly: Start with the Democrats on the panel. What were they concentrated today?
Lucas: Well, they certainly had many elements to choose from, but they really concentrated on what they say (and many veterans of the Department of Justice and Legal Observers say) that it has been the arms of the department under Bondi to attack Trump’s political enemies. The main Democrat of the committee is Dick Durbin by Illinois. This is how he summed up the opinion of the Democrats about his leadership.
(Sound sound of the archived recording)
Dick Durbin: The Attorney General has systematically used the main police agency of our nation to protect President Trump and his allies and attack his opponents and, unfortunately, the US people.
Lucas: And as evidence A, the Democrats point out the recent accusation of former FBI director James Comey a few days after the president publicly demanded that the Department of Justice processes Comey and other prominent critics of Trump.
Kelly: Well, and Comey has been dictated, of course, and is not the only person that the president has said that he should be prosecuted.
Lucas: That’s right. In particular, two other people who the president publicly questioned by name in a publication on the social networks that the Department of Justice pursued were the attorney general of New York, Letitia James, and the Democratic senator of California, Adam Schiff, a member of the committee for which Bondi was testing today.
Kelly: What creates an interesting dynamic, which I hope we arrive. But let me ask you first, this accusation that Bondi has turned the department into a weapon, when he asked her directly, how did he respond?
Lucas: Well, look, they asked specifically about a promise he made at his confirmation hearing that he would maintain the traditional independence of the White House Department and maintain policy outside the investigations and prosecutions. This is what she said.
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Pam Bondi: I have absolutely maintained that commitment, senator. I promised that it would also end the militarization of the Department of Justice and that the United States would have a single level of justice for all. And that is what we are doing in this country.
Lucas: Now, the Democrats also tried to press it on their management of Jeffrey Epstein’s archives. They tried to press it to fire career prosecutors and FBI officials for working in cases of disturbances in the Capitol or in Trump investigations. They tried to obtain answers on the decision of the department to abandon an investigation into Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, for allegedly accepting a $ 50,000 cash bribery from an undercover FBI agent. She refused to give answers. In many cases, he tried to divert the situation, in fact, chasing Democratic senators themselves. Here is an exchange with Adam Schiff in California, who said Bondi was personally attacking the Democrats instead of answering questions.
(Sound sound of the archived recording)
Bondi: Personal attacks? You have been attacking …
Adam Schiff: Then …
Bondi: … my FBI director.
Schiff: … then … but …
Bondi: You have been attacking my office.
Schiff: … but we …
Bondi: You’ve been attacking …
Schiff: But what interests us …
Bondi: … Tsar of the border.
Schiff: … What interests us is the answer to these supervision questions.
Bondi: What are you …?
Schiff: Then they asked you …
Bondi: No. Supervision?
Schiff: … My colleague asked him …
Bondi: You want your five minutes of fame …
Schiff: … My colleague asked him …
Bondi: … attacking good people.
Schiff: Normal order, Mrs. President, so I can ask a question.
Lucas: This was a combative audience at times, and that exchange gives you an idea of how it was.
Kelly: In fact, yes. Well, that is what the Democrats had in mind. What about the Republican members of this committee?
Lucas: Well, look, there was a huge partisan division in this. They were like two completely separated audiences. The Republicans expressed their support for Bondi, the enormous change he has contributed to the Department of Justice. They argue that the department was used as a weapon under the Biden administration to prosecute Trump and conservatives in general. That includes information made this week by the main republican of the panel that the FBI, back in 2023, analyzed the telephone records of more than half a dozen republican legislators as part of the investigation into Trump’s efforts to cancel the 2020 elections. They say that Bondi is ending that use of weapons.
Then, despite the concerns of the legal observers and veterans of the department on the direction that the department is taking, Bondi has the political type (pH) of the Republicans and the president to continue with what he is doing.
Kelly: Thank you, Ryan.
Lucas: Thank you.
Kelly: Ryan Lucas de Npr.
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