Over several hours, the attorney general was unprofessional and partisan, but most importantly, she was evasive, rejecting important lines of inquiry.
AG Pam Bondi was unprofessional and partisan, but most importantly, she was evasive, refusing to answer good questions she didn’t like.
Fortunately, Adam Schiff kept the receipts. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-10-08T13:48:39.368Z
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/ag-pam-bondi-refused-answer-key-questions-adam-schiff-kept-receipts-rcna236327
The U.S. attorney general has traditionally been known as “the people’s lawyer.” Attorney General Pam Bondi, however, has gone out of her way to position herself as Donald Trump’s lawyer......
But it was the same California senator who also used the opportunity to share some of the receipts he’d collected over the course of the proceedings. As The New Republic noted:
Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California took Attorney General Pam Bondi to task Tuesday for her incessant deflections and evasions throughout a Senate judiciary hearing. Bondi had verbally attacked Democratic senators throughout the hearing rather than answer their questions. Schiff was, evidently, keeping track of questions Bondi left unanswered, and he ran through the lengthy (yet inexhaustive) list.
It was arguably the most memorable exchange of the frustrating hearing.
"This is supposed to be an oversight hearing" -- Schiff helpfully ticks through all of the incriminating questions -- and there are many of them -- that Bondi refused to answer during today's hearing
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-07T17:29:23.535Z
As Schiff documented, Bondi refused to respond to all kinds of legitimate lines of inquiry, including:
whether the attorney general consulted with career ethics lawyers before approving a $400 million gift from Qatar (a country she was a paid lobbyist for);
what role she played in asking that Trump’s name be flagged in the Jeffrey Epstein files;
whether White House border czar Tom Homan took the $50,000 from undercover FBI agents in the run-up to the 2024 election;
whether career prosecutors found insufficient evidence to charge former FBI Director James Comey;
whether Bondi discussed the Comey indictment with Trump;
how the administration concluded that military strikes against civilians in international waters are legal;
whether Bondi approved the firing of antitrust lawyers who disagreed with the Hewlett Packard merger;
whether she supported a fund for violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6;
whether the Justice Department had fired career professionals because they worked on Jan. 6 cases;
and whether DOJ employees should have to abide by court orders.
In effectively all of these instances, the attorney general could’ve offered substantive answers. She instead attacked senators for asking good questions she didn’t like.
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