Perry Stein and Jeremy Roebuck
Washington: US Attorney-General Pam Bondi combatively defended her leadership at the Justice Department to lawmakers amid sharp criticism from Democrats that she botched the release of the Epstein files and has wielded the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency to heed President Donald Trump’s calls to prosecute his political foes.
In exchange after exchange, Bondi lobbed brash insults when lawmakers questioned her decisions and repeatedly portrayed the expansive Justice Department as unfairly maligned by Democrats and those who dislike Trump.
In her opening remarks before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday (Washington time), Bondi, highlighting her allegiance to the president, thanked Trump for his investment in fighting violent crime and said the Justice Department was working to advance the president’s priorities.
The attorney-general blamed the Biden administration for politicising the department and, echoing claims from conservative activists, said it was fighting against “liberal activist judges” working to stymie the president’s agenda.
“America has never seen this level of co-ordinated judicial opposition to a presidential administration,” Bondi said.
The hearing played out at a pivotal moment for the Justice Department, which has drawn criticism from Democrats and others over its handling of the congressionally compelled release of millions of documents from its investigation of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, its deployment of thousands of agents across the country to assist in immigration enforcement and its efforts to prosecute Trump’s perceived political adversaries.
The attorney-general did not buckle in her defence of the department and frequently attempted to shift attention to its efforts to reduce violent crime, a topic that earned her praise from Republicans. Bondi also came armed with scripted insults for Democrats.
“I’m not going to get in the gutter with these people,” Bondi said repeatedly in response to pointed questions. She lashed out when the committee’s top Democrat, Representative Jamie Raskin, directed her to respond to the panel’s inquiries.
“You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up loser lawyer,” she said. “You’re not even a lawyer.”
Raskin, a lawmaker from Maryland, denounced Bondi for her handling of the Epstein files, the department’s response to deadly shootings by federal personnel in Minneapolis and her oversight of cases involving people whom Trump has publicly called to prosecute.
“Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time,” Raskin said. “You replace real prosecutors with counterfeit stooges. Nothing in American history comes close to this complete corruption of the justice function and contamination of federal law enforcement.”
Just hours before Bondi addressed the committee, the department had sought to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who produced a video urging military service members not to follow “illegal orders”. But a federal grand jury in Washington refused to back those charges – a remarkable rebuke of the department’s efforts.
“You’ve turned the people’s Department of Justice into Trump’s instrument of revenge,” Raskin said.
The committee’s Republicans, led by chairman Jim Jordan, largely praised Bondi for the work of her first year in office. They credited her and FBI director Kash Patel with reducing rates of violent crime across the country, a trend that began under the final years of the Biden administration and has continued under Trump.
“What a difference a year makes,” Jordan said at the top of the proceedings. “Under Attorney-General Bondi, the DOJ has returned to its core missions – upholding the rule of law, going after the bad guys and keeping Americans safe.”
Tension erupted almost immediately as Democrats repeatedly pressed Bondi on the Justice Department’s failure to fully redact the names and identifications of Epstein’s victims from the files it released last month.
More than a dozen victims of Epstein were at the hearing and, when prompted by a Democratic lawmaker, raised their hands to indicate that they had never spoken to representatives of Bondi’s Justice Department.
As Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, asked Bondi to apologise to those victims in the audience for her handling of the investigation, the attorney-general deflected and asked why Biden-era attorney-general Merrick Garland didn’t apologise.
“I’m not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics,” Bondi said. She defended her career fighting for victims as a prosecutor.
“I am deeply sorry for what any victim has been through, especially as a result of that monster,” she said. “I want you to know that any accusation of criminal wrongdoing will be taken seriously and investigated.”
Bondi also took heat from Representative Thomas Massie – a Kentucky Republican and frequent Trump critic – who asked why more men with ties to Epstein weren’t under investigation. Justice Department officials have said that the files do not contain information that would lead to other people being charged.
She dodged Massie’s question and said he was only focused on the Epstein files because Trump is named in them, accusing him of having “Trump derangement syndrome”.
Bondi, likewise, refused to engage in second-guessing of the Justice Department’s handling of the recent fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal personnel amid the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown in Minneapolis.
She hinted of further investigations of Trump critics in the works.
Asked by Republicans whether John Brennan, the CIA director during the Obama administration, would soon be indicted as part of an investigation into the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, Bondi declined to confirm an investigation. She then added: “No one is above the law.”
Brennan’s lawyers said in December they had been informed that he was the target of a criminal probe under way in Florida. He has denied any wrongdoing.
At every turn, Bondi never missed an opportunity to praise Trump for his leadership.
“That’s why today, the other side sits here, they yell, cut me off,” she said.
“They want to yell. They want to ask a question and don’t want answers, because they want to distract from all the great things that this president and this administration are doing.”
The Washington Post
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