Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi confronted questions on her management of the Justice Division at a Senate listening to.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi was on Capitol Hill in the present day testifying earlier than Senate lawmakers. It was a combative listening to. Bondi defended her management on the Justice Division and she or he dismissed allegations that she has weaponized the DOJ to go after President Trump’s perceived enemies. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas was watching. He’s with us now. Hello, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hello there.
KELLY: Begin with the Democrats on the panel. What had been they centered on in the present day?
LUCAS: Properly, they definitely had numerous gadgets to select from, however they actually did zero in on what they are saying – and lots of DOJ veterans and authorized observers say – has been the division’s weaponization beneath Bondi to focus on Trump’s political foes. The highest Democrat on the committee is Illinois’ Dick Durbin. Here is how he form of summed up the Democrats’ view on her management.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DICK DURBIN: The lawyer normal has systematically weaponized our nation’s main legislation enforcement company to guard President Trump and his allies and assault his opponents and, sadly, the American individuals.
LUCAS: And as Exhibit A, Democrats level to the current indictment of former FBI Director James Comey simply days after the president demanded publicly that the DOJ prosecute Comey and different distinguished Trump critics.
KELLY: Properly, and Comey has been indicted, in fact, and isn’t the one individual the president has stated needs to be prosecuted.
LUCAS: That is proper. Two different individuals, notably, that the president publicly demanded by identify in a social media publish that the DOJ go after had been New York Legal professional Normal Letitia James and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, who’s a member of the committee that Bondi was truly testifying for in the present day.
KELLY: Which makes for some attention-grabbing dynamics, which I hope we’ll get to. However let me ask you first, this allegation that Bondi has weaponized the division, when that was put to her straight, how did she reply?
LUCAS: Properly, look, she was particularly requested a few promise that she made at her affirmation listening to that she would preserve the Justice Division’s conventional independence from the White Home and preserve politics out of investigations and prosecutions. Here is what she stated.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PAM BONDI: I completely have upheld that dedication, Senator. I pledged that I’d finish the weaponization, additionally, of the Justice Division and that America would as soon as once more have a one-tier system of justice for all. And that’s what we’re doing on this nation.
LUCAS: Now, Democrats additionally tried to press her on her dealing with of the Jeffrey Epstein information. They tried to press her on the firing of profession prosecutors and FBI officers for working in Capitol riot instances or on investigations into Trump. They tried to get solutions concerning the division’s determination to drop an investigation into Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, for allegedly taking a $50,000 money bribe from an undercover FBI agent. She refused to supply solutions. In lots of instances, she tried to deflect, truly, by going after Democratic senators themselves. Here is an trade with California’s Adam Schiff, who stated that Bondi was personally attacking Democrats as a substitute of answering questions.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BONDI: Private assaults? You’ve got been attacking…
ADAM SCHIFF: So…
BONDI: …My FBI director.
SCHIFF: …So – however…
BONDI: You’ve got been attacking my workplace.
SCHIFF: …However we…
BONDI: You’ve got been attacking…
SCHIFF: However what we’re fascinated with…
BONDI: …Border czar.
SCHIFF: …What we’re fascinated with is the reply to those oversight questions.
BONDI: What you are…
SCHIFF: So that you had been requested…
BONDI: No. Oversight?
SCHIFF: …You had been requested by my colleague…
BONDI: You need your 5 minutes of fame…
SCHIFF: …You had been requested by my colleague…
BONDI: …Attacking good individuals.
SCHIFF: Common order, Madam Chair, so I can ask a query.
LUCAS: So this was a combative listening to at instances, and that trade offers you a little bit of a style of what it was like.
KELLY: It does, certainly. OK, so that is what Democrats had on their thoughts. What about Republican members of this committee?
LUCAS: Properly, look, there was an enormous partisan divide on this. It was like two fully separate hearings. Republicans expressed their assist for Bondi, the large change that she’s dropped at the Justice Division. They argue that the division was weaponized beneath the Biden administration to go after Trump and conservatives extra broadly. That features data made public this week by the panel’s high Republican that the FBI, again in 2023, analyzed the cellphone data of greater than a half dozen Republican lawmakers as a part of the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. They are saying Bondi is ending that weaponization.
So regardless of issues from authorized observers and division veterans concerning the course that the division is taking, Bondi has the political kind (ph) of Republicans and the president to proceed what she’s doing.
KELLY: Thanks, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thanks.
KELLY: NPR’s Ryan Lucas.
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional data.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts could differ. Transcript textual content could also be revised to appropriate errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org could also be edited after its authentic broadcast or publication. The authoritative file of NPR’s programming is the audio file.
