Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Pam BondiPresident-elect Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department was embroiled in a heated confrontation with Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., on Wednesday as the California senator asked Bondi about whether she would prosecute Trump’s political opponents.
Schiff, a vocal critic of the president-elect, asked Bondi if he would investigate former special counsel Jack Smith as well as former Rep. Liz Cheney.
“I’m asking you sitting here today if you are aware of a factual predicate to investigate Liz Cheney,” he said.
‘MASTERCLASS’: BONDI FLIPS SCRIPT ON SENATOR DEM AFTER SUGGESTING HE’LL BE DOJ WEAPON
Pam Bondi, President-elect Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department as attorney general, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on January 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
“Senator, nobody asked me to investigate Liz Cheney, that’s a hypothetical,” he said.
He then turned on Schiff, looking at the crime rate in California.
“You know what we should be worried about? The crime rate in California is through the roof. Your burglaries are 87 percent higher than the national average,” he said. “That’s what I want to focus on, Senator.”
Schiff said that Bondi’s answers suggested he lacks the independence to say “no” to the president. He then asked if he would tell Trump he lost the 2020 election. Bondi accused Schiff of “playing politics” and leaking the memo from Rep. Devin Nunes.
“What I can tell you is that I will never play politics, you are trying to compromise me,” she said
TRUMP AG PICK PAM BONDI ‘TO MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN’ WITH ‘BACK TO BASICS’ DOJ FOCUS: FORMER COLLEGE
Then-Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks to reporters as he leaves the final meeting of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol at the Cannon House office building in Washington, DC , on December 19, 2022. (Drew Anger/Getty Images)
Schiff responded, asking if he would advise against President-elect Trump’s blanket pardons and suggesting that he would not be able to look at all the files on the first day.
“You’re going to be able to review hundreds of cases the first day … Of course not,” Schiff said.
Bondi was furious with Schiff’s comments.
“I am not going to deceive this body or you, Congress censured you, senator, for such reckless comments as this,” he said.
Schiff was censured in 2023 to promote claims that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia, a vote that made Schiff the third member of the House censured since the turn of the century.
The incident was one of several heated exchanges the former Florida AG had with Democratic lawmakers. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, DR.I., asked him about weaponizing the DOJ.
“Wouldn’t it be appropriate for a prosecutor to start with a name and look for a crime?” Whitehouse said during his line of questioning. “It’s a prosecutor’s job to start with a crime and find a name. Correct?”
Bondi replied highlighting federal government investigations into Trump.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“Senator, I think that’s the whole problem with the weaponization that we’ve seen over the last four years and what’s happened to Donald Trump,” Bondi said.
