January 16, 2025

Bondi. Pam Bondi.

Nominated to serve as attorney general, Bondi was neither shaken nor stirred by Democrat attacks.

Pam Bondi faced the Senate yesterday in confirmation hearings to serve as the next attorney general of the United States. If confirmed, she will have a tall task, thanks to the malfeasance of current AG Merrick Garland. Yet she promised to do the thing that matters most — stop the weaponization of the Justice Department.

For nearly two decades, Bondi was a local prosecutor in her native Florida. She then served two terms as Florida’s attorney general from 2011-2019, during which time she led the unfortunately unsuccessful legal charge against ObamaCare. After a couple of years in the private sector, she served on Donald Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment. Following the Matt Gaetz debacle, she stepped in as Trump’s AG nominee.

Over the course of the hearings, several Democrat senators hit her with as many hypotheticals as they could, all of which were designed to damage her and the president-elect. Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election? Was there massive fraud in 2020? Will you say “no” to the president when he asks you to do something illegal? Should Donald Trump pardon any January 6 rioters? Those sorts of questions.

Bondi wasn’t having any of it, responding that she would have to review specific information regarding each case. It is never the job of a nominee to commit to a specific decision under duress before the Senate just to please a partisan senator. Virtually no nominee is privy to the necessary facts of any such hypothetical at the time. They only know what they’ve seen on the news or what the senator is telling them by asking such questions. Yet Democrats always do this to Republican nominees.

In any case, here are some of the highlights.

“The Justice Department must be independent and must act independently,” Bondi said. “The number one job is to enforce the law fairly and even-handedly. And that’s what will be done if I am confirmed as the attorney general.”

“This department has been weaponized for years,” she lamented, “and it has to stop.”

Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who famously interrogated now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh over using the word “boof” in a yearbook to describe flatulence, apparently thought he had just the “gotcha” question to trip up Bondi. “It would not be appropriate for a prosecutor to start with a name and look for a crime?” Whitehouse pontificated. “It’s a prosecutor’s job to start with a crime and look for a name. Correct?”

Bondi responded with a mic drop: “Senator, I think that is the whole problem with the weaponization that we have seen the last four years and what’s been happening to Donald Trump. They targeted Donald Trump. They went after him, actually starting back in 2016. They targeted his campaign. They have launched countless investigations against him. That will not be the case if I am attorney general.”

Newly elected California Democrat Senator Adam Schiff attempted to ensure that he won the title of Senate Jerk. Pelting Bondi with unanswerable hypothetical “gotcha” questions for seven minutes, Schiff would allow Bondi half a sentence or so before smugly asserting that she wouldn’t answer that simple question and that he, therefore, needed to ask a different simple question.

At one point, she was so fed up that she shot back, “You were censured by Congress, Senator, for comments just like this.” At another, she replied, “You’re so worried about Liz Cheney. Do you know what we should be worried about? The crime rate in California right now is through the roof. Your robberies are 87% higher than the national average.”

One final highlight, as summed up by Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey: “Richard Blumenthal accused Bondi of just saying whatever she thinks will get her confirmed, a rather rich accusation coming from someone whose record of lying about his military service has been well established for the last 15 years.”

As for DOJ weaponization, I’m reminded of an unrelated quote from Chief Justice John Roberts: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Substitute justice and weaponization, and you’ve got your answer.

Unfortunately, the inertia of politics makes that easier said than done. Nearly everyone has a political bias, and with the exception of four years since 2009, the Justice Department has been run by Democrats who aim to weaponize every agency of government to achieve their ends. Assuming Bondi roots out those operatives, the temptation to retribution would be hard to deny. In some cases, true justice will demand action. In others, the wiser course may be to move on. Judging the difference will be critically important if Bondi is to realize her promise: “The partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all.” Let’s hope so.

Follow Nate Jackson on X/Twitter.

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