Senate Democrats on Wednesday pressed Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi about whether she would be independent of the political whims of President Donald Trump and turn the Justice Department against his political enemies.
They told Ms. Bondi, who served as Florida’s attorney general and has a legal career going back two decades, that she is qualified for the position, but they feared she would pursue Mr. Trump’s vengeance agenda.
“I believe in this nomination hearing is not your competence, nor your experience, at issue is your ability to say ’no.’ More than any other cabinet official, the Attorney General has to be prepared to put the Constitution first and even tell the President of the United States, ’you’re wrong,’” Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said at Ms. Bondi’s confirmation hearing.
“The political danger and personal costs of such a decision are well documented,” Mr. Durbin said. “You have only to ask former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, whom Donald Trump sacked for lack of loyalty.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told Ms. Bondi that he and other Democrats worry about her “weaponization” of the Justice Department.
“We want to make sure that is not the case, and that you remain independent and you remain able and willing to tell the president ’no’ when that’s necessary to protect the Constitution and the integrity of the department.”
SEE ALSO: AG nominee Pam Bondi promises to get tough on fentanyl, criminals coming over southern border
Sen. Eric Schmitt, Missouri Republican, said his Democratic colleagues’ questions about whether Ms. Bondi could be independent because the last three Democratic attorney generals were “perhaps the most politically biased … we’ve had in modern political history in the United States.”
“Eric Holder described himself as Obama’s heat shield and wingman,” he said. “Eric Holder bragged about it. Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton on the tarmac in a private meeting while she was investigating Hillary Clinton.”
Sen. Chris Coons, Delaware Democrat, asked Ms. Bondi if she would appoint a special counsel if she received credible evidence of a criminal violation by a White House official, including Mr. Trump.
Ms. Bondi responded: “That’s a hypothetical. I can tell you. What I do know is special prosecutors have been abused in the past on both sides.”
“We have seen that for many years. They have cost the taxpayers countless dollars, and I will look at each situation on a case-by-case basis and consult the appropriate career ethics officials within the department to make that decision,” she said.
Democrats on the Committee also asked Ms. Bondi, who was a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign, if she believed President Biden won the 2020 election.
SEE ALSO: Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi says she will examine Trump Jan. 6 pardons ‘case by case’
Ms. Bondi said that Mr. Biden “is the president of the United States” and that Mr. Trump is about to be sworn in as the next president of the U.S.
Her repeated response rankled Democratic senators including Sen. Maize Hirono of Hawaii, who said, “Ms. Bondi there is a difference between acknowledging it and you know I can say that Donald Trump won the 2024 election. … It’s disturbing that you can’t give voice to that fact.”
When asked if she would prosecute Mr. Trump’s political opponents, she said, “No one will be prosecuted or investigated because they are a political opponent. That’s what we’ve seen for the last four years in this administration. It will be prosecuted based on the facts and the law and fairly.”
Republicans on the committee defended Ms. Bondi’s remarks saying the Biden administration has weaponized the Justice Department against President Trump and his supporters for years and Ms. Bondi never called Mr. Biden an illegitimate president.
“There are election improprieties in every election. The matter of the question is a matter of scale, and whether or not you can prove it. We’ve seen it in North Carolina and seen it at other places. It’s one of the reasons why I support voter ID, because we want to make elections easy to vote and hard to cheat,” said Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
“But the fact of the matter is, people are cheating. So, if anybody on this dais suggests that there aren’t irregularities in every election, that they need to spend more time at home and really studying the facts. I don’t think, though, that you’ve said that Biden is an illegitimate president.”
This post was originally published on here
