Pamela Bondi, Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
As reported previously on the World Socialist Web Site, Bondi was picked in late November when former Congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew his nomination at Trump’s request after leading Republicans came out against him. In the wake of Gaetz’s demise, Bondi was selected as one of the far-right political figures, fascists and oligarchs in Trump’s cabinet.
Bondi’s credentials as a Trump loyalist are well established. She was on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment and Senate trial. She supported Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign and his attempted coup in January 2021. She went on TV after the 2020 election and stated that Trump had won Pennsylvania, which he had lost by more than 80,000 votes.
After the failed coup attempt, Bondi became head of the legal arm of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, and she was involved in lawsuits filed in advance of the 2024 election intended to facilitate another coup if Trump lost the vote in November.
Bondi’s appearance before the Senate was one of six confirmation hearings on Wednesday. The other nominees who appeared were Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, John Ratcliffe for CIA director, Sean Duffy for Secretary of Transportation, Chris Wright for Secretary of Energy and Russell Vought for director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
During her hearing, Bondi steadfastly refused to answer important questions while making pro forma statements about not allowing politics to interfere with Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations. However, she was given a friendly welcome by Democrats and Republicans alike, and congressional leaders of both parties predicted that the former attorney general from Florida (2011-2019) would be easily confirmed.
On the claims of a stolen election in 2020, Bondi refused to state clearly that Joe Biden won the presidency and that Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign was based on lies and falsifications. When asked by the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, whether she believed that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Bondi responded with a tautology, “President Biden is the president.”
When asked by Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat from California, about her appearance in 2020 alongside the eventually disbarred Rudy Giuliani and her declaration that Trump was the victor in Pennsylvania, Bondi defended her actions and said she was representing the campaign’s position at that time.
Bondi absurdly claimed she would maintain the Justice Department’s independence from the convicted felon Donald Trump and his plans to investigate his political opponents. She repeatedly said she would not politicize the DOJ, saying she would uphold the Constitution and the rule of law.
When Senator Durbin asked if she could say “no” to Trump, given her previous service as one of his personal attorneys during his first impeachment trial, Bondi simply lied, saying that “Every case will be prosecuted based on the facts and the law that is applied in good faith—period. Politics have got to be taken out of the system.”
When asked what she would do if Donald Trump told her to do something illegal, Bondi refused to give a straight answer. Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat from California, asked Bondi whether she would investigate Jack Smith, the DOJ special counsel who brought two indictments against Trump. Bondi responded, “I haven’t seen the file. ... I haven’t looked at anything. It would be irresponsible of me to make a commitment regarding anything ... without looking at the file.” In other words, she was open to investigating Smith.
Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat from Hawaii, asked the nominee to reject Trump’s characterization of supporters arrested in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol as “hostages” or “patriots,” but Bondi refused, claiming, “I am not familiar with that statement.”
Republican senators, including committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, sought to bolster Bondi’s bogus arguments that under her leadership, “partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone,” and “America will have one tier of justice for all,” thereby endorsing Trump’s claims that the cases brought against him were examples of politically driven persecution by the Biden White House. Grassley reviewed a list of complaints by Republicans that the Democrats had politicized the DOJ by prosecuting Trump over the past four years.
The corporate media is bending over backwards to present the hearing as a rigorous inquiry by the Democrats into Bondi’s role as a lawyer who participated in Trump’s 2020 coup attempt. In fact, the pro forma performance and Bondi’s imminent confirmation amount to a further rubber stamp by the entire political establishment and, in particular, the Democratic Party, of the pervasive criminality of the incoming government and its dictatorial character.