The cameras were on Pam Bondi as she spoke to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, and she put on the performance of a lifetime — or at least one to keep the boss happy.
For the verbal abuse she aimed at Democrats like Adam Schiff and Dick Durbin was a clear indication that there was really only one viewer with whom the U.S. attorney general seemed to care about.
To most, Tuesday’s hearing was a surreal and dismaying look into how the federal government’s political appointees under a second Trump presidency have become consumed with style over substance, and often seem uninterested or not knowledgable about various aspects of their jobs. That image has been born out over the past nine months by the likes of Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI director, who released misleading and incorrect information in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shooting and Kristi Noem, the Homeland chief, who couldn’t give an accurate definition of “habeus corpus” when asked during a Senate hearing.
For Bondi, however, the focus was on scoring political points by attacking Democrats at every conceivable opportunity, especially Schiff, who remains one of her boss’ most hated foes in Washington. She was mildly successful, telling Adam Schiff “if you worked for me, you would’ve been fired,” but appearing to become flustered at other moments when her lack of experience or knowledge of the job was exposed.
“What about the fires in California?” Bondi asked at one point, directing an awkward jab at the senator from California who had led an impeachment proceeding in her boss’ first term, and whom she dubbed a “failed lawyer” as she tossed out increasingly desperate insults.
The attorney general accused senators on the committee of “hating” the president and refused to answer direct questions from several members relating to the actions she was taking at the DOJ. Instead, she played the role of a comms staffer, demanding to know whether Schiff would “apologize” to Donald Trump after he correctly noted that Bondi was engaged in childish behavior throughout the hearing — including near-constant interruptions of senators and leveling personal insults.
This was Bondi’s day to prove her worth as a member of the ever-changing inner circle of Donald Trump, where she’s been a fixture for months — even traveling with the president to events like the U.S. Open and the FIFA Club World Cup. For some time, her positioning seemed to be in question thanks to her botched handling of the Epstein files investigation and an unhelpful declaration that files from the case were “on her desk” — but reporting around the DOJ’s handling of the issue and her dust-up with Patel, the FBI director, has largely cooled down.
The Department of Justice sits square in the center of Washington’s attention right now as the agency has seemingly transformed into a political tool under Donald Trump’s second presidency. In recent weeks, a U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia resigned rather than bring what was argued to be a flimsy and politically-motivated case against New York’s Democratic state AG, only to be replaced by an inexperienced White House aide who then brought a case against former FBI director James Comey, another enemy of Trump’s.
Bondi, in her role as attorney general, plays a unique role in the second Trump administration. News reporting indicates she and her second-in-command, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, have sought to bridge the gap between the president’s aims to wield the agency as a weapon against his enemies with the realities of criminal law.
Unlike her predecessors in the first Trump administration, she is taking only the most basic steps to concoct excuses for the agency’s new political bent thanks to the political cover the right believes Merrick Garland’s failed attempt to prosecute Donald Trump for the January 6 insurrection now provides.
As she sparred with the likes of Schiff and others, it was clear that Bondi’s only concern now is shoring up her bona fides with Trump as it pertains to taking on Democrats. Comey remains the only target on Trump’s enemies list actually charged by a prosecutor with the Department of Justice with a crime, and the president has already taken to publicly pressuring Bondi to make further strides against the others.
Time will tell if she managed to do that. The president spent the day meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney and hadn’t released a statement praising Bondi on Truth Social by the early evening — though it was possible he simply hadn’t watched clips on TV yet. In general, even with her proven ability to do battle with the president’s foes, she remains in a tight spot: responsible, ultimately, for seeing some of Donald Trump’s outlandish revenge fantasies come to life.
