Democrat senator for Hawaii Mazie Hirono said the Department of Justice had become “the Department of Revenge and Corruption” under Bondi, seeking “to favour the president’s friends and instill fear in his alleged enemies”.
Bondi flatly refused to answer time and again as Democrats pressed her on politically charged investigations, the firings of career prosecutors and other matters, and opted to respond to Democrats’ attacks by echoing conservative claims that President Joe Biden’s Justice Department – which brought two criminal cases against Trump – was the one that had been weaponised.
The fiery hearing lasted more than four hours.Credit: Bloomberg
Democrat senator Dick Durbin addresses the hearing.Credit: AP
“They were playing politics with law enforcement powers and will go down as a historic betrayal of public trust,” 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.”
The hearing split early along deeply partisan lines, with Republicans repeatedly leaping to Bondi’s defence to highlight the criminal cases against the president that they say show the institution she inherited was deeply politicised. They pointed to revelations from a day earlier that the FBI had analysed phone records of several Republican lawmakers as part of an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, a Democrat.
Pam Bondi responds to questions during the hearing.Credit: AP
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“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 Bondi.
The hearing marked 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 Bondi of that commitment and asked her if she thought she had upheld it. Bondi replied that she believed she absolutely had.
“I pledged that I would end the weaponisation also of the Justice Department and that America would once again have a one-tier system of justice for all,” Bondi said. “And that is what we are doing.”
Former FBI director James Comey, pictured in 2016, has been charged with lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee.Credit: Gabriella Demczuk
She refused repeatedly to discuss a bribery investigation into Trump border czar Tom Homan that was shuttered under the Trump administration, and declined to say whether she had talked to the president about the case against Comey, who was charged last month with lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he said he had not authorised anyone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about a particular investigation.
His indictment came just days after Trump appeared to publicly implore Bondi on social media to take that action against Comey and other perceived political enemies.
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 install a new prosecutor to secure the charges following the resignation under pressure of the experienced leader of that office.
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The Justice Department under Bondi has opened criminal investigations into other vocal critics of the president, including 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 Comey, and have slammed the investigations as politically motivated.
AP, Bloomberg
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