Schiff Lists All the Questions Pam Bondi Refused to Answer During Contentious Senate Hearing
By Brad Reed-Common Dreams on Comments Off on Schiff Lists All the Questions Pam Bondi Refused to Answer During Contentious Senate Hearing
“This is supposed to be an oversight hearing!” Sen. Adam Schiff exclaimed after documenting Bondi’s obstruction
US Attorney General Pam Bondi received a grilling from Senate Democrats on Tuesday, although much of her testimony was notable for the numerous questions she refused to answer.
Near the conclusion of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that lasted nearly five hours, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) confronted Bondi by running down a list of questions asked his colleagues that she had either dodged or outright refused to answer.
Among other things, Schiff noted that Bondi refused to answer if she had consulted with professional ethics attorneys before she signed off on President Donald Trumpreceiving a $400 million luxury jet from the Qatari government; if she had played any role in allegedly ordering federal agents to flag any mentions of Trump in the Jeffrey Epstein criminal case files; if Trump border czar Tom Homan had kept a $50,000 cash bribe he allegedly received from undercover FBI agents; or if the DOJ had provided any legal guidance or justification for bombing attacks ordered by Trump on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean.
Additionally, Schiff said that Bondi had refused to answer if she supported a “restoration fund” to pay money to Trump supporters who violently attacked the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021; if she had fired career Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors because of their work on January 6-related cases; and if she believed that government officials are obligated to abide by court rulings.
Schiff: I think it’s valuable that the American people get a sense of what you have refused to answer today. So these are just some of the questions you refuse to answer, but or have answered with personal attacks on members of this committee. You were asked whether you consulted… pic.twitter.com/SP0l0PY082
After running down his list, Schiff exclaimed, “This is supposed to be an oversight hearing!”
This prompted Bondi to interject, to which Schiff replied, “You can attack me later, I know you have plenty of canned attacks, we’ve heard them all day.”
Schiff then pivoted back to his original statement.
“This is supposed to be an oversight hearing of the Justice Department,” he said. “And it comes in the wake of an indictment called for by the president of one of this enemies. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing, and it comes in the wake of revelations that a top administration official took $50,000 in a bag, and this department made that investigation go away. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing in which dozens of prosecutors have been fired simply because they worked on cases investigating the… president.”
At this point, Bondi interjected with an apparent non-sequitur.
“What about the fires in California, do you care about that, Sen. Schiff?” she demanded to know.
Shortly after, she suggested that Schiff should “apologize to Donald Trump for slandering him.”
Schiff: This is supposed to be an oversight hearing when dozens of prosecutors have been fired simply because they worked on cases investigating the former president.
The day before the hearing, nearly 300 former DOJ employees released a letter blasting Bondi’s leadership of the department, while accusing her and other administration officials of “taking a sledgehammer to… long-standing work the department has done to protect communities and the rule of law.”
