I’m not sure if you’ve had an opportunity to watch Attorney General Pam Bondi testify before the Senate this morning, but this hearing quickly went off the rails.
This morning’s Senate oversight hearing laid bare a truth that we’ve been screaming since day 1: the nation’s top law-enforcement office has been contorted into a political shield for Donald Trump, with Attorney General Pam Bondi stonewalling even the most basic questions about public matters that go to the heart of accountability.
The hearing got especially heated with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse pressing an issue that has hovered on the margins of public reporting for years. He asked Bondi about “public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump with half naked young women,” and whether the FBI found such photographs “in their search of Jeffrey Epstein’s safe or premises or otherwise.” Bondi would not give a straight answer. Instead, she lashed out: “You sit here and make salacious remarks… trying to slander President Trump,” before pivoting to an unrelated attack on outside figures. When Whitehouse returned to the narrow point—“Have you seen any such thing?”—Bondi again refused to address the question.
That pattern of deflection hardened as senators sought clarity on an alleged cash bribe delivered to border official Tom Homan. Whitehouse asked, “What became of the $50,000 in cash that the FBI delivered, evidently in a paper bag, to Mr. Homan?” Bondi answered with a prepared refrain: “They found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing.” Whitehouse noted, correctly, that this was “a different question.” He was asking where the money went. She would not say. And her silence spoke volumes.
On the integrity of records related to Jeffrey Epstein, Sen. Dick Durbin asked who ordered Trump’s name to be flagged or redacted in the files. Bondi’s response—“I’m not going to discuss anything about that with you, Senator”—was not the answer of a transparent administration. They continue to cover-up for Epstein, and for Trump. Likewise when Sen. Richard Blumenthal asked about a dinner on the eve of the James Comey indictment, complete with a photo at the White House, Bondi replied, “I am not going to discuss any conversation or not with the press,” refusing to say whether Comey was discussed.
The hearing also ventured into life-and-death policy. One senator outlined concerns about reported military strikes on boats in the Caribbean, asking Bondi to explain “how the administration has concluded that the strikes are legal” and warning that “Due process is the cornerstone of our Constitution.” Bondi again declined: “I’m not going to discuss any legal advice that my department may or may not have given.”
Bondi refused to answer the most simple of questions. Durbin asked whether Bondi had been consulted by the White House before deploying National Guard units to U.S. cities, including Chicago. She refused to say, repeating, “I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House.” When pressed on the rationale for sending Texas Guard members to Illinois, she responded with partisan invective rather than facts: “If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.”
This was not merely obstruction; it was contempt for oversight. When Sen. Mazie Hirono asked who approved closing the bribery probe into Homan, Bondi reverted to the same non-answer—“They found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing”—and then insinuated that Hirono was “protesting with Antifa.” Asked about antitrust contacts surrounding Ticketmaster, Bondi again refused to engage, while tarring critics rather than confronting substance.
And yet, while Democrats sought facts, leading Republicans treated the forum as a stage for grievance or diversion. At one point the hearing devolved into jokes about a senator’s “Backstreet Boys” tattoo. The country is in a shutdown, constitutional norms are under pressure, and the majority chose jokes and distractions over oversight.
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Back to the hearing. The through-line was unmistakable: when confronted with questions about evidence, timelines, or process, the Attorney General would not answer. “I’m not going to discuss” became a mantra—on Epstein records, on the Comey indictment context, on legal opinions authorizing lethal force abroad, and on domestic deployments of the National Guard. This is not executive privilege narrowly asserted; it is a categorical refusal to account to the public.
In one telling exchange, Durbin reminded Bondi that “Investigation of your agency is part of my responsibility.” That is what oversight means in a constitutional republic. The Department of Justice does not belong to a president; it belongs to the people, and it must withstand scrutiny without resorting to smears or stonewalls.
What we witnessed today was not strength. It was fear. Fear of facts, fear of daylight, fear of a record that can be examined by courts and by voters. The stakes are not abstract: a cash bag that can’t be accounted for, secret legal theories for lethal force, a domestic deployment of troops without a stated rationale, the protection of the most notorious pedophile in American history, and an Attorney General who will not say what she did and why. That is how democracies erode, one unanswered question at a time.
Our job is to keep asking them. And we will.
