Lawmakers spar with Attorney General Bondi at Senate hearing

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi fielded hot topics and hard questions while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Tuesday. Several senators questioned Bondi on the Department of Justice’s handling of the Epstein files, President Donald Trump’s cross-department administrative overhaul, and the DOJ’s work investigating former FBI Director James Comey. The hearing also discussed the Biden administration’s recently revealed phone taps on several U.S. lawmakers.

Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, opened the nearly four-hour hearing by praising Bondi’s tough-on-crime policies, her work toward restitution for whistleblowers, and her launching of a task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias in government. In contrast, Ranking Member Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., accused Bondi of weaponizing prosecutors and law enforcement to attack Trump’s political opponents. The Justice Department launched a political purge and removed hundreds of employees, including civil rights division career attorneys and department ethics officials, Durbin said. He also called attention to the Trump administration accepting a luxury Boeing 747-8 from Qatari leaders. Everything the DOJ has done since Trump’s resumption of office is a stain on American history that would make even President Richard Nixon recoil, Durbin claimed.

What did Bondi say? The attorney general opened by citing her two goals upon taking office: to end the weaponization of the justice system and to return to the DOJ’s core mission of fighting violent crime. The DOJ and the FBI are targeting violent criminals and child predators, not sitting senators who have the wrong political affiliation, Bondi quipped, referring to the Biden administration’s alleged phone taps.

Since Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. Marshals, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have made over 76,000 arrests, according to data Bondi shared with the senators. During the same period, feds also seized over 47 tons of methamphetamine, more than 150 tons of cocaine, over 3 tons of fentanyl powder, 33.2 million counterfeit pills, and about 1 ton of heroin. Over 22,000 illegal firearms were also taken off the streets, including about 3,300 being trafficked to Mexican cartels. Bondi also defended the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

Other highlights:

• On former FBI Director James Comey: Bondi refused to answer several questions around the Comey indictment, saying she could not comment on ongoing litigation.
• On disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein: Bondi clarified and defended her now-retracted comments about the alleged Epstein client list. The attorney general told media members earlier this year that the billionaire sex offender’s so-called client list was on her desk. The administration later denied such a list ever existed. Bondi noted she explicitly told the media that the files were sitting on her desk but that she had not yet reviewed them. She said the revelation that there was no client list came after she actually read them. She refused to say whether she had staffers flag any mentions of Trump in the Epstein files.
• Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called on the DOJ to assign a special prosecutor to investigate who in the Biden administration approved the alleged wire taps on politicians.
• Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., repeatedly pressed Bondi for answers about what happened to $50,000 that border czar Tom Homan allegedly accepted from undercover FBI agents. Bondi repeatedly sidestepped the questions, noting the investigation was closed and suggesting Whitehouse talk to the FBI. Bondi also went on the offense against Whitehouse, asking whether he had received money from LinkedIn founder and former Epstein associate Reid Hoffman, who has said he regretted his contacts with Epstein.

Dig deeper: Read Elizabeth Russell’s report for more about the FBI’s surveillance of sitting senators.