Pam Bondi’s approach on Tuesday to fielding hostile questions posed by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee about the perceived political weaponization of the Justice Department was simple and brutal: Don’t answer, just attack.
Ms. Bondi, who was openly defiant of the Democrats on the committee, attempted to cast four-plus hours of stonewalling senatorial queries about decisions on her watch as an aggrieved defense of President Trump, herself and other administration appointees.
Ms. Bondi’s bombast, to a great extent, reflected a coordinated effort across the Trump administration to flip potentially damaging — or revealing — moments of public accountability into opportunities to savage political opponents.
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, opened the questioning by asking if the White House consulted Ms. Bondi on the deployment of federal troops to Chicago. She ignored the question and instead raised her voice to accuse Mr. Durbin, a 28-year veteran of the Senate who has delivered billions in criminal justice funding to his state, of disloyalty to his constituents.
“I wish you’d love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she said.
Oversight hearings have always had elements of political theater. But the approach taken by Ms. Bondi, and previously by the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, has been different than that taken by any of their predecessors. It is characterized by a contemptuous refusal to cursorily address inconvenient questions and the use of prepared attacks against Democrats to change the subject and drown out criticism.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked her about the Justice Department’s decision to drop the investigation into Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, who was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation. “What became of the $50,000?” Mr. Whitehouse asked.
Ms. Bondi refused to answer the question, and instead attacked Mr. Whitehouse by demanding to know why he once took campaign donations from Reid Hoffman, a Democratic donor that Republicans have linked to the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
None of the committee’s Republicans pressed her to provide answers.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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