Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to answer a senator’s corruption-related question about foreign investments in Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency, instead ranting about migrants and drugs.
During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing Wednesday, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley asked Bondi whether she was bothered by the United Arab Emirates investing $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, which preceded Trump sending hundreds of thousands of A.I. chips to that country.
“Does this sequence of events concern you about foreign influence on the United States of America?” Merkley asked, noting that the Biden administration rejected a similar deal partly due to national security concerns.
But Bondi didn’t even make an attempt to stay on topic.
“The foreign influence that I would be concerned about if I were you is the Mexican that we just—the Mexican national that resided in Oregon who we just arrested who had 384 pounds of methamphetamine,” she said.
Bondi wasn’t done there. Merkley, she said, should also be concerned with “the Honduran drug trafficker who was residing in Portland for distributing fentanyl.”
As Bondi offered a third example, this one of a “Mexican national” in Merkley’s home state, the senator jumped in. But Bondi pressed on, lashing out at the nature of his question.
“57,700 fentanyl pills and stolen firearms in Oregon— that’s what we should work together on, not gotcha questions during a budget hearing on public safety,” she argued.
Merkley rejected that characterization.
“The attorney general has made the point that she’s very concerned about the issues that I’m concerned about as well regarding security in this country,” he responded. “But let the record note that in terms of foreign influence and the sale of foreign influence through the president’s coins, she absolutely refuses to respond, and instead turns to a whole list of different topics.”
“I think it’s important for the leader of the Justice Department of the United States to be very concerned about foreign influence,” he continued, before speaking to Bondi directly. “And I encourage you to take on the topic and not consider it an offense that those of us who are concerned here, Democrats and Republicans, want Americans to make American decisions. Not foreign influence being bought through crypto coins.”
Merkley and Sen. Elizabeth Warren last month called on the Office of Government Ethics to investigate Trump’s UAE deal, which “represent[ed] a staggering conflict of interest, one that may violate the Constitution and open our government to a startling degree of foreign influence and the potential for a quid pro quo that could endanger national security.”
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