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Bondi, expressing loyalty to Trump, says she won’t pursue political inquiries
Pam Bondi cast herself as an independent prosecutor who would keep politics out of the Justice Department if confirmed as President Trump’s attorney general.
Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, refused to explicitly say that she would defy Trump’s pressure during a confirmation hearing on Wednesday, but she offered a blanket promise that “politics will not play a part” in deciding who to investigate.
Both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee predicted that Bondi, a former attorney general of Florida, would be easily confirmed. Both sides expressed relief that Trump’s first pick, former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, had stepped aside to give way to Bondi, who has prosecutorial experience and a more balanced temperament.
But the daylong hearing had its contentious moments as Democrats repeatedly accused her of dodging basic yes-or-no questions about election denialism, the potential prosecution of Trump’s political enemies — and how she would deal with attempts by Trump to influence the department’s actions.
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“Politics has to be taken out of this system,” said Bondi, who repeatedly circled back to her argument that the Justice Department had been misused and misdirected under the Biden administration. “This department has been weaponized for years and years and years, and it has to stop.”
Bondi, 59, sought to project the image of a tough, independent prosecutor, and she repeatedly expressed loyalty to Trump and her belief that he had been the victim of politically motivated prosecutions.
She did not endorse Trump’s contention that the special counsel who brought two criminal cases against him, Jack Smith, should be thrown out of the country, but said what she had “heard on the news” about his conduct was “horrible.”
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When asked if she would investigate Smith, or anyone else, at Trump’s behest, she added that she would exercise independent judgment, in accordance with the law.
Perhaps buoyed by the likelihood of her confirmation, Bondi was fairly expansive in sharing her thinking on several contentious topics that she would confront in office.
At times, the session seemed to be a prelude to the as-yet unscheduled confirmation hearings for Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to run the FBI, which is part of the Justice Department. Bondi parried attempts to tie her to Patel, who has promoted an enemies list of people who he might investigate, and who is regarded as an ally by some members of the pro-Trump conspiracy movement QAnon.
Asked about Patel’s position on the group, she replied, “I look forward to hearing his testimony about QAnon in front of this committee.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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