AG fascist fotze pam bondi has to be the most corrupt attorney general in the modern history. She is a rude, ignorant, dishonest hündin, a disgrace to the nation, and a defender of pedophiles and sexual predators. It will be ironic if someday her decisions to defend criminal AND immoral activity will come back on her, her family and friends. And FYI Sen fascist fotze josh"I shit my pants on 6JAN21"hawley r-MO my family's phone was tapped after the fbi started a file on me when I was in the 9th grade during the nixon regime. It was annoying and insulting and illegal but we didn't have anything to hide cause I / we didn't do anything wrong. What are you afraid of being discovered? This from the New York Times.....
Trump Administration Live Updates: Defiant Bondi Testifies in Combative Senate Hearing
Where Things Stand
Bondi testimony: During a combative Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi flatly refused to answer questions from Democrats about the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the decision to drop an investigation into President Trump’s border czar and the legal rationale for deadly strikes on boats the administration has said were carrying drugs from Venezuela. Ms. Bondi accused the Biden administration of having weaponized the Justice Department, even as the Trump administration has eroded the department’s traditional independence.
Chuck Grassley, the Trump-aligned chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, opens an oversight hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi with a rambling attack on “indefensible” Democratic actions, including the investigation into President Trump. Bondi is expected to face withering questioning on a range of topics, including the strong-arm removal of a respected career prosecutor in Virginia last week.
Senator Grassley, in his opening remarks of a hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi, tells the committee that his staff is working closely with the Justice Department’s weaponization task force, run by Ed Martin, the former U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia. The group was formed purportedly to root out “abuses of the criminal justice process” by local and federal law enforcement officers, but Martin has said he plans to use his authority to expose and discredit those he believes to be guilty, even if he cannot find sufficient evidence to prosecute them. Critics say that would be weaponizing an institution he has been hired to de-weaponize.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted Attorney General Pam Bondi for overseeing a “systematically weaponized agency to protect President Trump and his allies” and “attack his opponents.” Durbin, who represents Illinois, accused Trump and Bondi of targeting Chicago for punitive immigration enforcement and using “the full force” of the federal government to intimidate his opponents and score political points.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, adopting the attack-is-the-best-defense playbook she has used in previous appearances before the committee, angrily dismissed suggestions that she has weaponized the Justice Department to attack President Trump’s political foes. “They wanted to take President Trump off the playing field,” she said of Biden-era officials who indicted Mr. Trump twice. “This is the kind of conduct that shatters the American people’s faith in our law enforcement system.”
Bondi just lauded the work of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Under her watch, the agency responsible for enforcing the nation’s gun laws has been essentially leaderless, after F.B.I. director Kash Patel — who was originally given leadership of the bureau — quit. He was replaced by another off-site official with a demanding day job, Daniel P. Driscoll, the secretary of the Army.
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois asked Attorney General Pam Bondi if the White House consulted her on the deployment of federal troops in Chicago. She responded with a high-volume personal attack. “I wish you’d love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. And currently the National Guard is on the way to Chicago — if you’re not going to protect your citizens.”
Bondi, like the F.B.I. director Kash Patel, is attempting to turn Democrats’ questioning on the committee into high-volume political theater. The attorney general has shouted herself hoarse after only a few minutes of questioning. She has refused to answer any questions about her decision-making on the Epstein investigation and other matters.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat of Rhode Island, asked Bondi about the Justice Department’s decision to drop the investigation into Tom Homan, who was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation. “What became of the $50,000?” he asked. Bondi refused to answer the questions, then attacked Whitehouse by demanding to know why he once took campaign donations from a donor that Republicans have linked to Jeffrey Epstein.
Bondi’s calculated bombast on Tuesday, punctuated by her partisan and personal attacks on Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, reflects a coordinated effort across the Trump administration to flip potentially damaging moments of public accountability into opportunities to savage political opponents. Oversight hearings have always had elements of political theater. But the approach taken by Bondi, and previously by F.B.I director Kash Patel, has been different than that taken by any of their predecessors, characterized by a contemptuous refusal to cursorily address inconvenient questions and the use of prepared attacks against Democrats to change the subject and drown out criticism.
UPDATE 1 BELOW:
More than three hours into the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Pam Bondi has repeatedly refused to answer questions about her involvement in and knowledge of the forced resignation of Erik Siebert, the former U.S. attorney in eastern Virginia.
Siebert was replaced after refusing to prosecute the former F.B.I. director James Comey. Bondi did not deny reports that she opposed his firing and did not directly rebut the accounts of administration officials who have told The Times that she cast doubt on the viability of the case.
Bondi expressed little interest in the claims of Commerce Secretary Commerce Howard Lutnick that the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was “the greatest blackmailer ever.” Bondi has been under fire for months since she decided to stop the release of F.B.I. files about Epstein and declared that no evidence had been found of him blackmailing others. Pressed by Senator John Neely Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, she said no official had asked to talk to Lutnick, a former neighbor of Epstein’s.
Kennedy seemed perplexed by that answer. “If Howard Lutnick wants to speak to the F.B.I.,” and if F.B.I. Director Kash Patel wants him interviewed, that would “absolutely” happen, Bondi said.
Bondi also dodged queries about reports that the Justice Department signed off on the legality of military strikes against boats in international waters that are believed to be involved in drug trafficking. “I’m not going to discuss any legal advice that my department may or may not have given or issued,” she said.
Republican senators denounce Jack Smith over Jan. 6 scrutiny of their phone records.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Republican lawmakers repeatedly denounced Jack Smith, the former special counsel, and the Biden administration for taking the phone records of more than a half-dozen G.O.P. senators to determine who they spoke to just before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
The attacks formed a core part of Republicans’ response as Democrats on the panel grilled Attorney General Pam Bondi over President Trump’s increasing pressure on the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies. Republicans used the phone records to argue instead that the Biden administration had politicized the department, though much remains unknown about the records’ role in the investigation, and there has been no evidence that the Biden White House influenced the inquiry.
Republicans pressed Ms. Bondi to investigate and punish anyone associated with the investigative step, such as the F.B.I. agents who examined the phone data of nine Republican lawmakers to determine who they called, who called them, and when and where the calls were made.
The analysis of phone toll records is a common investigative tactic, though there are occasional policy and political debates about when and how such data should be taken. Such toll record information does not include the contents of conversations, which would require a court-approved wiretap.
On Monday, Republicans revealed an internal F.B.I. document showing that the toll records were collected in September 2023, shortly after Mr. Smith indicted Mr. Trump for conspiracy and other crimes related to Jan. 6.
The committee’s chairman, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called the move politically motivated “spying,” and said there was no factual predicate to justify examining the lawmakers’ phone records around the time of the riot by supporters of Mr. Trump.
One of the senators whose phone records were taken with a grand jury subpoena, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, erupted at the hearing over the issue.
“Can you tell me why my phone records,” taken at a time when he was the chairman of the committee, “were sought by the Jack Smith agents?” Mr. Graham asked. “Why did they ask to know who I called and what I was doing from January 4th to the 7th?”
He then asked Ms. Bondi if she thought that was an “abuse of power.”
The attorney general declined to answer, but said Mr. Smith “wasted $50 million” in an effort
to “put President Trump in jail.”Another Republican lawmaker whose phone records were examined over that four-day period was Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who falsely claimed that the F.B.I. document showed agents had engaged in wiretapping.
“The F.B.I. tapped my phone,” Mr. Hawley said angrily.
Mr. Grassley and other lawmakers have hedged when asked if they plan to call Mr. Smith as a witness to discuss his investigation, saying they plan to let the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, conduct his own inquiry. At the hearing, Ms. Bondi said she “cannot discuss whether there is an ongoing investigation” into the matter.
Through the course of this Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi has sought to deflect a pointed informational request with an attack line. One example: She accused Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, of “storming” Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem during a news conference in June. In fact, the senator was physically removed from the event and shoved into a hallway as he approached the lectern to ask the secretary a question.
No comments:
Post a Comment