Today in Politics, Bulletin 306. 2/12/26

… Intense fallout today from Pam Bondi’s psychotic appearance before the House Judicial committee yesterday. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) posted: “Dear AG Bondi, You did the one thing your king ordered you not to do: you made Trump look guilty. You also lied under oath. And you surveilled the search history of Congress Members. We are impeaching you when we flip the House. Unless you resign first. Good evening.”

… AOC to Meidas: “We all saw the performance Bondi had. She was screaming and crashing, and I think it’s because she knows she is implicated in a massive cover-up to protect a ring of pedophiles through the redactions of perpetrators’ names, withholding 3 million files, and the unexplained transfer of Maxwell into a cushy facility. And that’s even before digging into her history in FL.”

… Gary Lesser, President of the Florida Bar: “I worked with Pam Bondi when she was in Tallahassee, but this conduct is disgraceful and not befitting the Attorney General of the United States, regardless of the questions being asked.”

… Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin on MS NOW about Bondi’s testimony: “She’s there to cover up the Epstein conspiracy. It’s not a coincidence that she’s from Florida, that she was there with Alex Acosta. These people have traveled through politics with Trump, and now her job is to try to cover up everything that’s going on with Epstein files.”

… One senior staffer for the Senate Judiciary committee: “I have run, participated in, prepped witnesses for, and watched hundreds of hearings. Some witnesses are good. Some witnesses are bad. That’a just how it goes. Never, ever have I seen a witness as unprofessional, disrespectful, unhinged and untruthful as Pam Bondi. All I can say is - karma’s a bitch and it’s coming.”

… Right-wing journalist Eric Spracklen: “MAGA boomers are so fragile. I’ve lost hundreds of followers today for simply not buying into the nonsense Pam Bondi was spewing today and being willing to say it publicly. I don’t care. I call it like I see it.”

… Right-wing podcaster Owen Shroyer, who co-hosted Alex Jones’s show for many years: “Look, you can be the biggest Trump supporter out there, that’s fine, but if you can’t admit this Bondi hearing and her handling of the Epstein Files has been a complete disaster, you’re just as brainwashed and indoctrinated as the radical left that you attacked for the last 8 years.”

… But Bondi was playing to an audience of one, and she did exactly what he wanted. Trump posted: “AG Pam Bondi, under intense fire from the Trump Deranged Radical Left Lunatics, was fantastic at yesterday’s Hearing on the never ending saga of Jeffrey Epstein, where the one thing that has been proven conclusively, much to their chagrin, was that President Donald J. Trump has been 100% exonerated of their ridiculous Russia, Russia, Russia type charges. Actually, it is the SLIMEBALL Democrats, many of them big Donors and Politicians, that have been proven GUILTY!”

… “Republican” Loser, Sanctimonious RINO Congressman, Thomas Massie, made a total fool of himself yesterday, fighting aimlessly against a hopeless agenda of Hate and Stupidity, as most clearly stated by his crashing Job Approval Numbers in KY, where a Military Hero Opponent, Ed Gallrein, is crushing him in the Polls. He is now in “Wacky” Liz Cheney territory! Nobody cared about Epstein when he was alive, they only cared about him when they thought he could create Political Harm to a very popular President who has brought our Country back from the brink of extinction, and very quickly, at that!”

… Raskin on why so much victim information wasn’t redacted by DOJ: “It’s either spectacular incompetence or it was a deliberate effort to keep other survivors from coming forward—basically saying if you come forward, you could have your name, phone number, address, old photographs, all of it dragged out in the open and published by the DOJ.”

… Raskin on one illegal redaction: “There was a phone interview in which the report comes through to Epstein that Trump said: ‘No, Epstein was not a member of Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago. But we never sent him away.’ Well, that totally contradicts what Trump has been saying about how precisely he expelled him and sent him away when he learned about him. So that makes sense to me that somebody wanted to redact that.”

… Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) was asked about the new revelation that DOJ is monitoring searches by members of Congress to see what they are looking at in the files: “It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files. Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched. That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop this spying on members.”

… Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC): “Yes. I will confirm. DOJ is tracking the Epstein documents Members of Congress search for, open, and review. I was able to navigate the system today and I won’t disclose how or the nature of how; but confirmed the DOJ is tagging ALL DOCUMENTS Members of Congress search, open and review. Based on how I confirmed this, there are timestamps associated with this tracking.”

… Mike Johnson to The Independent on Bondi tracking members of Congress’s Epstein search history: “I’ve heard the allegations I’m looking into that myself. It would obviously be an important line that’s crossed, and obviously we can’t allow for that.”

… Mace then went on Piers Morgan’s podcast and said she has seen the Epstein client list and the names on it will shock the world. She said DOJ is protecting those identities. Mace said the list includes both Republicans and Democrats, along with wealthy elites, media figures, people in power, and even current and former prime ministers and presidents and it will go down as one of the greatest cover-ups in American history.

… Politico: “Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) will introduce a resolution Thur designed to put the Senate on record opposing the prospect of Trump granting a pardon or clemency to Ghislaine Maxwell. She said she wanted to ‘make sure the US Senate sends a clear message to the WH that a convicted sex trafficker of minors should not receive any clemency.’”

… Fox reported additional details on why the airspace was closed over El Paso: “According to a US official, the directed energy/laser counter drone technology was in CBP’s control when the balloon was mistakenly shot down near El Paso, Texas earlier this week. In Jan, Pete Hegseth signed an agreement for the Pentagon to loan the directed energy counter drone platform to DHS. The official said the agreement was signed sometime in the last 30 days. Following the shoot down is when FAA closed the airspace.”

… Foreign policy journalist Kate Brannen: “I’m not sure Veep could have come up with this scenario: DOD lends DHS experimental lasers, which it uses to shoot down party balloons, which prompts the FAA to close down El Paso’s airspace for 10 days, only to announce a few hours later that it is reopening.”

… Bloomberg: “The DOJ lawyer who tried - and failed - to indict 6 Democratic lawmakers over their military video runs an active dance photography studio and worked for US Attorney Jeanine Pirro decades ago. Both prosecutors on case had no prior federal backgrounds as experts were walled off.”

… NBC: “None of the DC grand jurors who heard the Trump admin’s pitch on why they should indict Democratic lawmakers over a video urging members of the military and intelligence communities to uphold their oaths believed DOJ had met the low threshold of probable cause.”

… “It’s exceedingly rare for a federal grand jury to reject prosecutors’ attempts to secure an indictment, since the process is stacked in the govt’s favor. Fed grand juries need a minimum of 16 members to have a quorum, and they max out at 23 members. Just 12 grand jurors need to agree that the govt had probable cause to indict, a threshold much lower than the unanimous ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard that a trial jury needs to convict.”

… “In 2016, DOJ investigated more than 151,000 suspects, but grand juries returned just 6 ‘no bills,’ per DOJ statistics. The vast majority of assistant US attorneys will go their entire careers without being rejected by a grand jury like this. The lawyers who attempted to bring the case are political appointees, not career prosecutors.”

… Former 25-year federal prosecutor Joyce Alene: “I have never heard of a situation where every single grand juror rejected an indictment. Every single one.”

… Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who is one of the Democrats DOJ attempted to indict, told Punchbowl she thinks they are going to try again with a new grand jury: “I’ll be honest, we hear they’re going again tomorrow.”

… Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ): “I don’t expect this administration to give up. They have a pattern. This president doesn’t like to lose. I don’t expect this is going away any time soon.”

… Bush appointee Judge Richard Leon issued an order today blocking Hegseth from moving forward with disciplinary proceedings against Kelly for the video: “US Senator Mark Kelly, a retired naval officer, has been censured by Pete Hegseth for voicing certain opinions on military actions and policy. In addition, he has been subjected to proceedings to possibly reduce his retirement rank and pay and threatened with criminal prosecution if he continues to speak out on these issues.”

… “Hegseth relies on the well-established doctrine that military servicemembers enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces. Unfortunately for Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military. This Court will not be the first to do so!”

… “This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees. After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’ To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their Government, and our Constitution demands they receive it!”

… Politico: “Eye-catching new polling out today finds Trump’s favorability is cratering even among young men. The survey of 1,462 men registered to vote between the ages of 18-29 finds a whopping 58% believe Trump has negatively impacted their finances, vs. just 23% who say he’s had a positive impact. The young men surveyed gave Trump a 32% approval rating, compared to 66% who disapprove. That 34-point gap is a far cry from Trump’s 2024 numbers: he won 18-29-year-old male voters by 14 points.”

… Two very heated hearings took place today in the Senate - one with MN AG Keith Ellison in the Senate and another with ICE and Border Patrol officials. Ellison on Minneapolis: “It felt like we were being occupied by the federal govt, and I started returning to reading about the Boston Massacre. How did those Bostonians feel when a far away government in England had imperial troops marching all over their city, harassing and abusing the citizenry. That’s kind of how I felt.”

… Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): “Are you aware of training for activists? Ellison: Yeah I’m aware. It’s common for people to use their First Amendment rights, sir. This is First Amendment activity.”

… Ellison: “We’re hoping we can gain cooperation perhaps in the Alex Pretti matter, but we’ve been advised that the feds aren’t investigating the Renee Good matter and we haven’t received any access to the evidence. Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI): So in these two cases, you’re being stonewalled? Ellison: That’s a yes.”

… Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH): “Will you condemn Louis Farrakhan’s comments saying that Judaism is a dirty religion? Ellison: I thought I was coming here to talk about immigration policy?”

… Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) literally started foaming at the mouth with a glob of spit on his lip as he yelled at Ellison over the Medicare fraud cases in MN: "You've been right at the center of this fraud from the beginning and you've enabled it, and sir you ought to resign. Ellison: Don't call me pal. Hawley: I should call you prisoner because you ought to be in jail. Ellison: Good luck with that. Well, see what you can do about it."

… Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) after playing a video of the Pretti shooting: “I see not even a hint here of anything aggressive on his part. I don’t think this should take months and months. There needs to be a conclusion - the public needs to know, if I go to a protest and shout something at people, could I be killed?”

… Paul to Border Patrol commissioner Rodney Scott on Pretti’s killing: “Because people within the govt made conclusions immediately that he was a terrorist and an assassin, people aren’t believing that it’s going to be an honest investigation. There has to ultimately be repercussions - it’s inexcusable.”

… Sen. Peters: “Did you provide Noem with an assessment of what Pretti was engaged in and that he was engaged in domestic terrorism? Is that why she said that? CBP Commissioner Scott: No. ICE Director Lyons: No. Peters: How would she possibly come to that kind of conclusion to tell the American public that when they’re watching this video? Scott: I can’t speculate on what someone else would say or why.”

… Noem repeatedly stated that she only referred to Pretti as a domestic terrorist because that’s what ICE and CBP told her. Now they are saying she is lying.

Yesterday was my podcast Uncovered with Anthony where we do a deeper dive into the top stories of the week. If you missed that you can find it here. Tomorrow is Ask the Editor with Ben where I answer 5 of your questions. If you have a question for the show or just have a topic you want me to talk more about, leave it in the comments to this Bulletin.

… Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI): “Do you believe that ICE has the authority to be deployed to US polling places? Lyons: There’s no reason for us to deploy to a polling facility. Slotkin: So if the president gets you on the phone and says he needs you to go and physically