A Ridiculous Attorney General
Bondi’s smug evasions revealed volumes about the Administration
In her appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Pam Bondi delivered a display of puerile arrogance so complete it amounted to contempt for the rule of law.
This was, recall, an oversight hearing—a core constitutional responsibility of Congress to hold the Executive Branch accountable and of the DOJ to provide full and candid answers not just to the Senators but to the American people. I have prepared Department officials for such hearings, and without fail they approach them with utter seriousness and a sense of public responsibility. Bondi, by contrast, approached it as an affront and an opportunity to disparage Democrats in high Trumpian style.
Bondi came armed with smirks, rehearsed when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife barbs, and the smug conviction that defiance is strength and contempt is law. She mocked the Senators, dodged questions, and affected outrage at having to field inquiries from such “lesser” officials. What should have been a serious inquiry into DOJ conduct became a made-for-TV rage staged to impress one viewer—Donald Trump.
From the opening gavel, Bondi refused to engage with the premise of oversight. She treated every question as a political game and every senator as an adversary. When asked about clear instances of Department interference in ongoing prosecutions, she declined to answer—then lashed back with personal attacks.
Senator Blumenthal asked about her role in quashing investigations of Trump allies. Bondi snapped, “How can you accuse me when you dodged the draft?” Adam Schiff raised the matter of politically targeted prosecutions. She shot back, “You’ve spent your career chasing cameras.”
Bondi responded with mockery and dripping contempt even to easy procedural questions. When Senator Klobuchar asked about the Department’s chain of command, Bondi sneered, “You should know that, Senator—you were a prosecutor once, weren’t you?” The point was not to inform but to debase. It was, from beginning to end, an exercise in trolling disguised as testimony.
Dodge and attack. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
Bondi did let slip one fairly straightforward answer—and it may have been a mistake that could come back to bite her.
Senators pressed her on the long-reported allegation that former ICE Director and current border czar Tom Homan accepted $50,000 in cash, recorded by undercover FBI agents. The investigation was later closed under Trump DOJ leadership.
Bondi’s initial response was that multiple DOJ personnel found no credible evidence of wrongdoing. From there, she retreated to the non-answer: “You’re welcome to talk to the FBI.”
When reminded the FBI reports to her, she repeated that deflection. Later, when asked again whether a tape exists, she claimed she didn’t know.
That’s an assertion that defies belief. The existence of the tape has been widely reported, and multiple former DOJ officials have confirmed that it was viewed internally before the case was shut down.
If Bondi truly didn’t know, it’s a breathtaking abdication of duty. If she did know and lied, it’s something worse. In either case, she opened a wound she cannot easily stitch—and on the subject of a potential scandal that is not going away.
The core line of questioning was Bondi’s indisputable politicization of the Department and betrayal of the most sacred tenet of federal prosecution. To questions on that vital topic, Bondi supplied a non-sequitur: “Donald Trump is the most transparent president in American history.” (I was reminded of the medical report from Trump 1.0, where his doctor pronounced him “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” language that doctor later admitted Trump had dictated himself.)
It apparently was meant to be a denial of the basic damn charge, but if so it was one that no reasonable observer could possibly believe. Indeed, that same morning, The New York Times published a survey of fifty Washington lawyers—career DOJ veterans, defense attorneys, and former U.S. attorneys. Every single one said the Department under Bondi had been politicized. Every single one.
Some of the Senators expressed understandable exasperation at the hearing. California Senator (and former AUSA) Adam Schiff, unlike many, kept calm and treated Bondi with something like cool dismissiveness. He methodically listed the questions Bondi declined to answer; there were no fewer than 14 topics she dodged, as The Washington Post details this morning—on Homan, on DOJ-White House contacts, on Comey, on Epstein. He didn’t trade insults; he held the list up like evidence and stayed impassive.
That’s the proper approach for this Attorney General. Bondi is a patent lightweight and essentially a programmed attack dog for Trump. She is destined to be remembered as a consummate traitor to the mission of the Department of Justice, her portrait gathering dust in the basement. But her loyal service to Donald Trump perfectly captures the great contempt this administration has for every institution of government—the courts, the Congress, and the independent agencies.
Under Trump 2.0, contempt has become doctrine, and loyalty to his personal interests the North Star. Bondi’s Senate performance wasn’t a lapse or a gaffe; it was exactly the point.
Bondi’s DOJ has become the purest reflection yet of Trump’s governing philosophy: loyalty over law, aggression over truth, contempt over competence.
Bondi is the vulgarity currently atop the Department; but if not her, there would be another lackey installed with instructions to serve Trump, the Constitution be damned.
What Bondi revealed in her smug refusal to engage is the administration’s core conviction—that law is just another instrument of politics, to be bent or ignored depending on the needs of the moment.
Bondi seemed pleased with her performance, which is a further indication of her essential puerility. It doesn’t take much skill to throw insults at Senators, just a hypertrophic spleen.
But when the country’s chief law enforcement officer treats Congress like a heckling audience—and the White House cheers—the real casualty is public faith that the law matters and that our institutions are serving the American people.
That, not Bondi’s ridiculousness, is the takeaway from her tawdry performance at the hearing she converted into a farce to please the boss.
Talk to you later.
question: couldn’t the american bar association start revoking the law licenses of any doj attorney that knowingly, provably breaks the law?
Her defiance reveals how weak she is with regards to the law and the Constitution. She avoids, mocks, and smirks as she tries to move attention away from the actual question. She reveals her inadequacies in leading the DOJ. Is the Committee able to have her come back to be asked the questions again? If she evades, smirks, deflects again, continue to show how weak and out of control she is. We all need to see how the DOJ is out of control and poorly led. Keep the videos so her responses can come back to haunt her.