WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi struck a defiant tone Tuesday during a Senate hearing where she dodged a series of questions about brewing scandals that have dogged her agency.
Bondi, a Trump loyalist, refused to discuss her conversations with the White House about the recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey and the deployment of federal troops to Democrat-run cities.
She deflected questions about an alleged bribery scheme involving the president’s border advisor and declined to elaborate on her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
In many instances, Bondi’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee devolved into personal attacks against Democrats, who expressed dismay at their inability to get her to answer their inquiries.
“This is supposed to be an oversight hearing in which members of Congress can get serious answers to serious questions about the cover-up of corruption about the prosecution of the president’s enemies,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said toward the end of the nearly five-hour hearing. “When will it be that the members of this committee on a bipartisan basis demand answers to those questions?”
Her testimony came as the Justice Department faces increased accusations that it is being weaponized against President Trump’s political foes.
It marked a continuation of what has become a hallmark of not just Bondi, but most of Trump’s top officials. When pressed on potential scandals that the president has taken great pains to publicly avoid, they almost universally turn to one tactic: ignore and attack the questioner.
That strategy was shown in an exchange between Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who wanted to know who decided to close an investigation into Trump border advisor Tom Homan. Homan reportedly accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents after indicating he could get them government contracts. Bondi declined to say and shifted the focus to Padilla.
“I wish that you loved your state of California as much as you hate President Trump,” Bondi said. “We’d be in really good shape then because violent crime in California is currently 35% higher than the national average.”
In between partisan attacks, the congressional hearing allowed Bondi to boast about her eight months in office. She said her focus has been on combating illegal immigration, violent crime and restoring public trust in the Justice Department, which she said Biden-era officials weaponized against Trump.
“They wanted to take President Trump off the playing field,” she said about the effort to indict Trump. “This is the kind of conduct that shatters the American people’s faith in our law enforcement system. We will work to earn that back every single day. We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime.”
She defended the administration’s deployment of federal troops to Washington, D.C., and Chicago, where she said troops had been sent on Tuesday. Bondi declined to say whether the White House consulted her on the deployment of troops to American cities but said the effort is meant to “protect” citizens from violent crime.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) asked about the legal justification for the military shooting vessels crossing the Carribbean Sea off Venezuela. The administration has said the boats are carrying drugs, but Coons told Bondi that “Congress has never authorized such a use of military force.”
“It’s unclear to me how the administration has concluded that the strikes are legal,” Coons said.
Bondi told Coons she would not discuss the legal advice her department has given to the president on the matter but said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “is a narcoterrorist,” and that “drugs coming from Venezuela are killing our children at record levels.”
Coons said he was “gravely concerned” that she was not leading a department that is making decisions that are in “keeping with the core values of the Constitution.” As another example, he pointed to Trump urging her to prosecute his political adversaries, such as Comey.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) the top Democrat on the committee, raised a similar concern at the beginning of the hearing, saying Bondi has “systematically weaponized our nation’s leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies.”
“In eight short months, you have fundamentally transformed the Justice Department and left an enormous stain on American history,” Durbin said. “It will take decades to recover.”
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