Pam Bondi and Senate Democrats spar amid Trump’s troop deplo...

Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, sparred on Tuesday with Democratic senators who demanded answers on her involvement in Donald Trump’s crackdown on political opponents, deployment of national guard troops to cities nationwide and handling of the Epstein files.

The clashes at an annual Senate judiciary committee hearing come after months of allegations from the Democrats that Trump has compromised the justice department’s traditional independence and instead used it to bring charges for political reasons.

Federal prosecutors have indicted the former FBI director James Comey, while a reported federal investigation of Tom Homan, the “border czar”, was dropped after Trump took office. Meanwhile, the president has continued to deploy national guard troops into Democratic-led jurisdictions for missions billed as fighting crime and safeguarding immigration agents, over the objections of local leaders.

Throughout the five-hour hearing, Bondi declined to talk about many of the administration’s controversial decisions, despite persistent questioning from the Democrats. When pressed, she personally attacked several senators from the minority or invoked the ongoing government shutdown to depict them as negligent.

“You voted to shut down the government, and you’re sitting here. Our law enforcement officers aren’t being paid,” Bondi replied when the committee’s top Democratic senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois, questioned the Trump administration’s rationale for sending the national guard into Chicago.

“I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she continued, adding: “If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.”

In his opening statement, Durbin described Bondi as doing lasting damage to the department tasked with enforcing federal law.

“What has taken place since January 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil,” he said.. “This is your legacy, Attorney General Bondi. In eight short months, you have fundamentally transformed the justice department and left an enormous stain in American history. It will take decades to recover.”

Of particular concern to Democrats were the charges against Comey, which came after Trump publicly called on Bondi to indict his enemies and fired a veteran prosecutor who refused to bring the case.

The attorney general avoided talking about the indictment, saying it was a “pending case”, but argued it was approved by “one of the most liberal grand juries in the country”.

She was similarly dismissive of questions about the closing of the Homan investigation, in which he was said to have promised immigration-related federal contracts in return for $50,000 from an undercover FBI agent.

“The Department of Justice and the FBI conducted a thorough review, and they found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing,” Bondi said. She also refused to discuss the legal rationale behind the Trump administration’s attacks on boats allegedly carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela.

When Democratic senators became persistent, Bondi responded with critiques and allegations of hypocrisy. Durbin asked the attorney general why she had said earlier this year there was a list of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s clients “sitting on my desk”, only for the justice department to announce no such document existed.

“If you listen to my entire clip on that, I said I had not reviewed it yet,” she said.

Durbin then asked Bondi why there was no signature on a July memo from her department saying it had determined that Epstein died by suicide in 2019 and no further details about his case would be made public.

“Did you take money from Reid Hoffman, campaign donations, who was a huge Epstein friend?” Bondi replied.

Hoffman is a billionaire venture capitalist who donates to Democrats. He has acknowledged and apologized for collaborating with Epstein on fundraising, but denied being one of his clients.

“Eventually, you’re going to have to answer for your conduct,” Durbin warned. “You won’t do it today, but eventually you will.”

After saying he was concerned about the politicization of the justice department, Senator Alex Padilla got into a back and forth with Bondi. He called for order, prompting Bondi to invoke a June incident where Padilla was briefly handcuffed at a Los Angeles press conference by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.

“You sure didn’t have order when you stormed secretary Noem,” the attorney general said.

The ugliest exchanges came during questioning from Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator from California and longtime Trump foe, who the administration recently accused of mortgage fraud.

As he sought details from Bondi on the handling of the Homan investigation, the attorney general said: “If you worked for me, you would have been fired, because you were censured by Congress for lying.”

Schiff, a former representative, was censured in 2023 by the Republican-led House of Representatives for his involvement in Trump’s first impeachment.

Republican senators generally spoke positively of Bondi, or used their questioning to ask how she would address specific criminal justice issues. Several expressed anger over a report published on Monday that Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed during Joe Biden’s presidency to prosecute Trump, obtained data of nine lawmakers’ phone calls.

“I’ve heard them say that Joe Biden never targeted his political enemies,” Republican senator Josh Hawley said of the Democrats. “Huh? That’s interesting, because I could have sworn that yesterday we learned that the FBI tapped my phone.”

Smith’s cases against the president ended when he won re-election last year. His report into the prosecutions mentions communications between senators and an unnamed co-conspirator, and notes that the justice department’s public integrity section was consulted during the investigation to ensure they did not run afoul of specific protections the law affords to members of Congress.

In June, Reuters reported that Bondi has stripped the public integrity section of much of its staff and powers – including its role approving charges against members of Congress.