U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Tuesday.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Attorney-General Pam Bondi repeatedly deflected questions as she sought during a combative congressional hearing on Tuesday to defend herself against growing criticism that she’s turning the law-enforcement agency into a weapon to seek vengeance against President Donald Trump’s political opponents.
Democrats sought to use the hearing, coming on the heels of the indictment of former FBI director James Comey, to warn of what they view as the politicization of a department that has long prided itself on remaining independent from the White House.
Ms. Bondi brushed aside with seeming disdain questions about her tumultuous tenure, flatly refusing to answer time and again as Democrats pressed her on politically charged investigations, the firings of career prosecutors and other matters. Her refusal to engage on the questions meant little if any fresh insight was offered about her actions and decisions, with Bondi instead opting to respond to Democrats’ attacks by echoing conservative claims that former president Joe Biden’s Justice Department – which brought two criminal cases against Mr. Trump – was the one that had been weaponized.
“They were playing politics with law enforcement powers and will go down as a historic betrayal of public trust,” Ms. Bondi said of the Biden Justice Department. “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.”
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The hearing split early along deeply partisan lines, with Republicans repeatedly leaping to her defence to highlight the criminal cases against the President that they say show the institution she inherited was deeply politicized. They pointed to revelations from a day earlier that the FBI had analyzed phone records of several Republican lawmakers as part of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Mr. Biden, a Democrat.
“This is an outrage, an unconstitutional breach and ought to be immediately addressed by you and Director Patel,” Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the committee, told Ms. Bondi, referring to FBI director Kash Patel.
Democrats, meanwhile, accused Ms. Bondi of destroying the department’s credibility and eroding its long-standing independence from the White House as the Republican President publicly calls for the prosecution of his political foes.
“What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil,” Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, said of the president who resigned to avoid being impeached in connection with the Watergate scandal. “This is your legacy, Attorney-General Bondi. In eight short months, you fundamentally transformed the Justice Department and left an enormous stain in American history. It will take decades to recover.”
Democrats press Bondi on her pledge not to play politics
The hearing marked Ms. Bondi’s first before the panel since her confirmation hearing last January, when she pledged to not play politics with the Justice Department – a promise Democrats pounced on as they pressed the Attorney-General on whether she can withstand political pressure from the White House.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, reminded Ms. Bondi of that commitment and asked her if she thought she had upheld it. Ms. Bondi replied that she believed she absolutely had.
“I pledged that I would end the weaponization also of the Justice Department and that America would once again have a one-tier system of justice for all,” Ms. Bondi said. “And that is what we are doing.”
Ms. Bondi set the tone for the hearing at the outset, repeatedly snapping with a raised voice at Mr. Durbin and deflecting questions from him by pointing to the murder rate in Chicago and asserting that lawmakers from his party were responsible for shutting the government down.
“You’re sitting here grilling me, and they’re on their way to Chicago to keep your state safe,” Ms. Bondi said, referring to Mr. Patel and Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche.
“Madam Attorney-General,” Mr. Durbin replied, “It’s my job to grill you.”
Bondi refuses to answer questions about Comey and other matters
She refused repeatedly to discuss matters, including a bribery investigation into Trump border czar Tom Homan that was shuttered under the Trump administration. That drew the ire of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, who accused Ms. Bondi of responding with “far-right internet talking points.”
She also declined to say whether she talked to the President about the case against Mr. Comey, who was charged last month with lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he said he had not authorized anyone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about a particular investigation. His indictment came just days after Mr. Trump appeared to publicly implore her on social media to take that action against him and other perceived political enemies.
“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,” Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, said as Ms. Bondi repeatedly interrupted him. “And when will it be that the members of this committee on a bipartisan basis demand answers to those questions and refuse to accept personal slander as an answer to those questions?”
Mr. Comey is set to make his first court appearance on Wednesday in the case, which was brought despite career prosecutors’ reservations about the strength of evidence, after the Trump administration raced to install a new prosecutor to secure the charges following the resignation under pressure of the experienced leader of that office.
The Justice Department under Ms. Bondi has opened criminal investigations into other vocal critics of the President, including Mr. Schiff on accusations of mortgage fraud, New York Attorney-General Letitia James and Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor and current mayoral candidate. They have all denied wrongdoing, as has Mr. Comey, and have slammed the investigations as politically motivated.