Bondi faces grilling from Senate Democrats on DOJ ‘weaponization,’ Epstein files

President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Division to target his political opponents and lawmakers’ rising requires the discharge of extra recordsdata from federal investigations into deceased intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein took middle stage at a contentious Senate listening to Tuesday for Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi. 

The listening to earlier than the Senate Judiciary Committee is the primary time since July that Bondi has confronted questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer season for the division that included deployments of federal regulation enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a rising variety of investigations introduced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. 

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley kicked off the listening to with in depth remarks searching for to focus on situations of what Republicans have labeled “weaponization” of the Justice Division underneath the Biden Administration, citing selective disclosures by FBI Director Kash Patel of the investigation into President Trump’s try and overturn his 2020 election loss.

“These are indefensible acts,” Grassley mentioned. “This was a political phishing expedition to get Trump in any respect prices.”

Particularly, Grassley singled out a well timed disclosure by the FBI on Monday that confirmed former Particular Counsel Jack Smith’s investigators at one level sought restricted cellphone toll data of a number of Republican senators across the time of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

As a part of his investigation, Smith extensively investigated Trump and his allies’ strain marketing campaign on lawmakers to dam the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win — together with calls that had been made to senators after the Capitol was breached by the pro-Trump mob.

There is not any indication that Republican senators had been a goal of Smith’s investigation, and the toll data sought by investigators wouldn’t embody any details about the content material of conversations they might have had.

“We’re pointing this all out as a result of we will not have this repeated in america,” Grassley mentioned. “We need to finish it proper now, whether or not we have now Republican or Democrat administrations.”

Grassley made no point out of latest directives from Trump to have the Justice Division act “now” to hold out prosecutions of his political foes, or different situations of alleged politicization throughout Bondi’s tenure which have led to scores of exits of longtime profession officers who’ve sounded alarm in regards to the division getting used as a software to enact political retribution.

Rating Democratic member Dick Durbin mentioned in his opening assertion assailed the Trump administration for the conduct in Chicago, a metropolis through which Durbin represents.

“As President Trump turns the total power of the federal authorities on Chicago and different American cities, the assault on the town I’m proud to signify is only one instance of how President Trump and Lawyer Basic Bondi shut down justice on the Division of Justice, even earlier than the president’s social gathering controlling the white Home, Senate and Home of Representatives shut down the federal government,” Durbin mentioned.

“The legal professional basic has systematically weaponized our nation’s main regulation enforcement company to guard President Trump and his allies and assault his opponents. And sadly, the American individuals. You have got purged a whole bunch of senior profession officers because you first appeared earlier than us,” he added.

Durbin listed off the best hits for critics of Bondi’s Justice Division, to not embody the closed investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, the Eric Adams case being dropped, the hiring of a Jan. 6 defendant who attacked MPD officers, the dealing with of the Jeffrey Epstein recordsdata, and the case in opposition to James Comey.

“What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. That is your legacy,” Durbin mentioned.

Bondi pushed again in opposition to her critics and Democrats through the listening to. In her opening assertion, she framed her tenure because the “finish” of weaponization of regulation enforcement, whereas reinforcing her in depth efforts to enact President Trump’s agenda.

“We’ll work to earn that again each single day. We’re returning to our core mission of preventing actual crime. Whereas there may be extra work to do, I imagine in eight brief months we have now made large progress in direction of these ends,” she mentioned.

She additionally railed in opposition to judges who’ve dominated in opposition to the administration within the months since Trump took workplace, whereas highlighting the Justice Division’s string of victories on the Supreme Courtroom.

“My attorneys have performed unbelievable work advancing President Trump’s agenda and defending the Govt Department from judicial overreach,” she mentioned.

Bondi continued to hit again at Durbin, who questioned her in regards to the federal deployment to Illinois.

The legal professional basic taunted the senator about Chicago’s crime price. Bondi mentioned that Patel and Deputy Lawyer Basic Todd Blanche had been on their solution to the town.

As ABC Information first reported, the transfer to hunt Comey’s indictment came to visit the objections of profession prosecutors and adopted Trump’s removing of his appointee to steer the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Japanese District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing costs in opposition to Comey and New York Lawyer Basic Letitia James, sources informed ABC Information.

Trump finally put in a White Home aide and former private legal professional Lindsey Halligan to steer the workplace and transfer ahead with the case in opposition to Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of constructing false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — whereas declining to indict on a 3rd false statements cost. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is ready to seem Thursday in federal courtroom for his arraignment.

Whereas sources informed ABC Information that management on the DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer information of Comey’s indictment in information interviews and social media posts. 

The following week, the administration moved to fireplace a prime nationwide safety prosecutor within the workplace, Michael Ben’Ary, over a deceptive social media submit that falsely prompt he was among the many prosecutors who resisted charging Comey. 

Ben’Ary was main a serious case in opposition to one of many alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing through the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Division’s management and labeled his removing as only one in a sequence of latest strikes taken to root out profession officers for political causes on the expense of the nation’s safety. 

“This instance highlights probably the most troubling facet of the present operations of the Division of Justice: the management is extra involved with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they’re with defending our nationwide safety,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for People killed and injured by our enemies shouldn’t be contingent on what somebody within the Division of Justice sees of their social media feed that day.”

The DOJ declined to remark when requested about Ben’Ary’s letter.

These actions have triggered unprecedented turmoil on the Japanese District, which oversees a few of the nation’s most delicate nationwide safety, terrorism and espionage investigations.

Present and former officers say that turmoil has reverberated additional throughout the Justice Division’s workforce across the nation, with attorneys involved they’re going to face skilled repercussions in the event that they resist collaborating in politicized investigations or prosecutions.

On Monday, practically 300 DOJ staff who left the division since Trump’s inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi’s listening to describing her management as “appalling” in its remedy of the profession workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White Home. 

“We name on Congress to train its oversight tasks much more vigorously,” the previous staff mentioned. “Members in each chambers and on either side of the aisle should present a significant examine on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we name on all People — whose security, prosperity, and rights rely upon a robust DOJ — to talk out in opposition to its destruction.”

The DOJ declined to touch upon the letter.

Bondi will seemingly additionally face heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein recordsdata, after the Justice Division and FBI mentioned in a July letter that no additional releases had been warranted and that there was no proof suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor women.

Democrats have accused the administration of searching for to cowl up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had previous associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.

Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 whereas awaiting trial on costs of trafficking younger women and girls, had been associates within the Nineteen Nineties however the president mentioned the connection soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump’s Florida membership after he explicitly warned him not to take action.

An effort underway within the Home of Representatives to carry a vote on a measure that may demand the administration launch the whole lot of the recordsdata has been placed on maintain after Speaker Mike Johnson despatched the Home dwelling amid the continued authorities shutdown. 

The latest rise in acts of political violence may even seemingly be a central focus of questions for Bondi. Trump has just lately ordered the division to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and different senior White Home officers have alleged, with out offering proof, as serving to to fund perpetrators who’ve attacked federal regulation enforcement officers dispatched across the nation. 

Simply days after Trump’s feedback, a senior official within the Justice Division ordered a number of U.S. Lawyer’s places of work across the nation to organize to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations based by billionaire George Soros, naming legal statutes starting from theft, materials help for terrorism and racketeering, ABC Information beforehand confirmed.

In an announcement, the Open Society Foundations referred to as the accusations “politically motivated assaults on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Modification proper to free speech.”

In her most up-to-date appearances earlier than the Home and Senate in late June, Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes dedicated by undocumented immigrants of their states and districts that had been among the many briefing supplies she introduced along with her to the hearings.

She has additionally dismissed any characterization of the Justice Division showing to work in lockstep with the White Home as “politicization” of regulation enforcement. Bondi and different senior DOJ officers have as a substitute argued that the 2 federal circumstances introduced in opposition to Trump by a particular counsel underneath the Biden Administration represented a much more egregious instance of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled on the division by Trump. 

“Whether or not you are a former FBI director, whether or not you are a former head of an intel group, whether or not you’re a present state and native elected official, whether or not you’re a billionaire funding organizations to attempt to maintain Donald Trump out of workplace — all the pieces is on the desk,” Bondi mentioned in a Fox Information look final month. “We’ll examine and can finish the weaponization — not will there be a two-tier system of justice.”