Watching Attorney General Pam Bondi respond to questions by Democratic (and one Republican) members of the House Judiciary Committee by deflecting, pivoting, attacking and name calling was a shocking experience. The committee, chaired by Republican Jim Jordan, has the responsibility of overseeing the Department of Justice.
While Bondi was praised by most Republican members, she was attacked by every Democratic member, mostly for her handling of the Epstein matter and the killings in Minneapolis by federal agents of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Bondi responded well to praise. Bondi refused to answer any question that failed to praise her or Trump.
Attorney General Pam Bondi combatively defended her leadership at the Justice Department to House lawmakers on Wednesday amid sharp criticism that she botched the release of the Epstein files and has wielded the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency to heed President Donald Trump’s calls to prosecute his political foes.
In exchange after exchange, Bondi lobbed brash insults when Democratic lawmakers questioned her decisions and repeatedly portrayed the expansive Justice Department as unfairly maligned by Democrats and those who dislike Trump.
In the back of the hearing room sat Epstein’s victims. When asked to face them and apologize for the failure to redact their names and personal information from the released papers, even though the name of a co-conspirator was redacted from the same document showing that someone from the DoJ had reviewed the document and decided to reveal the victims’ identities while concealing the identity of the perp, Bondi refused, stating that she was not going to “roll in the gutter” with these “theatrics.”
Bondi came armed with scripted insults for Democrats.
“I’m not going to get in the gutter with these people,” Bondi said repeatedly in response to pointed questions. She lashed out when the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, directed her to respond to the panel’s inquiries.
“You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up loser lawyer,” she said. “You’re not even a lawyer.”
The committee chair, Jim Jordan, smiled with little to contribute, such as directing the witness to answer the question asked. In a break from the past, Jordan didn’t contribute vitriol of his own in defense of Trump, playing the congressional attack dog as he had in the past, but also didn’t use his position as chairman to prevent the hearing from devolving into a shitshow. As vulgar as the description may be, it was a shitshow.
In the past, cabinet secretaries testifying before congressional committees largely behaved with some level of decorum toward the “other” party, recognizing that they are senior government officials who should demonstrate some minimal degree of dignity and that there will almost certainly come a time when they will ask Congress for something, whether funding or a law, thus making it wiser to avoid becoming bitter enemies than doing everything possible to offend and outrage legislators. Bondi was having none of it.
The unfunny “joke” was that Bondi’s performance was intended for an audience of one, Trump having been critical of her for being weak and ineffective in fulfilling his every whim of retribution. And indeed, that may well have been Bondi’s only purpose in showing up at all, to put her face on TV so Trump would definitely see it while praising every aspect of his existence and using her big burn book filled with insults and, it would appear from a pic taken from the side, information about Democratic representatives who viewed quasi-unredacted pages of the Epstein file, attacking his enemies.
Aside from the stunning outrageousness of the performance, it raises a far more serious question. How does Congress perform its oversight responsibility when an attorney general’s response to every challenge is “bite me”? While impeachment is politically impossible given the make-up of the House and Senate at this time, it’s similarly not a “high crime and misdemeanor” for an attorney general to provide offensive yet non-responsive answers to questions. As Secretary of the Treasury. Scott Bessent has shown, it’s entirely possible to be non-responsive while smiling inoffensively and pretending to answer without answering anything.
Can Bondi be held in contempt of Congress under 2 U.S.C. § 192? It’s not that she didn’t appear, or that she replied “I refuse to answer.” She answered, in a way, even if the responses bore no relation to the question asked.
These are very serious questions in need of very serious answers with regard to the Department of Justice’s handling of the Epstein files, and they remain wholly unanswered. Bondi made it absolutely clear that she will not be forthcoming. Bondi made it clear that she and Ka$h Patel are liars. Bondi made it clear that she will sacrifice herself and any shred of integrity that might still linger beneath the surface to please her lord.
What’s Congress to do? Based upon what happened before the House Judiciary Committee, it appears that Bondi has proven Congress impotent to deal with the failures, malfeasance and lies propagated by the Department of Justice, and there isn’t a damn thing it can do about it.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up, loser lawyer. You’re not even a lawyer.”
Donald Trump corrupts everything he touches. And everyone.
The House ceased to have much in the way of any pretense of dignity some time ago. Given current partisan divisions, its committees are also going to have trouble enforcing procedural rules in hearings. Even if a witness takes a dump on the chair person’s desk, members politically aligned with the witness aren’t going to support sanctions.
“A fish rots from the head down” was a phrase popular during the Reagan years and is not without merit. I have seen more than a few articles describing Trump as “coarse,* and getting coarser”** so it’s not really a surprise that his minions would follow in his footsteps. See further examples at the response by … Leavitt, I think … of “your mom” to a reporter.
This is arguably part of his appeal to his base – he and his posse say the same things that they-the-base would say to opponents. The sorts of things you say on the playground at recess when you can’t actually formulate a coherent response or argument. The style that some people just never outgrow.
*compare with all the people who describe how “nice” Trump is when he’s not “on stage.” See Bill Maher’s discussion of his dinner with Trump as an example.
**often mentioned in conjunction with the comment “symptom of advancing dementia.”
Gym Jordan is a disgrace to my state and my alma mater. He has no business chairing anything and should be impeached and removed from office in particular for his widely known role in the most disgusting of scandal. He is irredeemable.
When do we say enough is enough and can all of them, Reps and Dems alike? The Dems and Massie are in the right this time, but I trust them none to demonstrate good judgement in the future. Not a single one. At the same time we dump all of the Justices and replace all of them. And of course Donnie and his goons must go too. Only then can we call the swamp drained.
Then the investigations can truly begin into all the now former politicians and justices. Until that point, it’s all circuses. Do I have to make this the sole platform of a new political party to get it done? That would take work to come up with a way to choose new ones without making it even worse, though. I don’t know how to do that. Maybe force people against their will to do it? Draw lots? As neutrally as possible in any case.
There’s precedent for casting lots for office.
1Chronicles 25:8
“And they cast lots, ward against ward, as well the small as the great, the teacher as the scholar.”
Casting lots would work. We couldn’t get any worst.
I’ll just go around to grocery stores and round people up. At least they would know what that word means. Improvement already. They might not be happy to hear they’ve been conscripted to serve as lowly politicians, but I don’t care. Someone make me a tyrant already. I’ll do it.
Name an administration where this kind of childish insolence would be met with anything but immediate condemnation by the president.