MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Attorney General Pam Bondi was on Capitol Hill today testifying before Senate lawmakers. It was a combative hearing. Bondi defended her leadership at the Justice Department and she dismissed allegations that she has weaponized the DOJ to go after President Trump's perceived enemies. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas was watching. He is with us now. Hi, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
KELLY: Start with the Democrats on the panel. What were they focused on today?
LUCAS: Well, they certainly had a lot of items to choose from, but they really did zero in on what they say - and many DOJ veterans and legal observers say - has been the department's weaponization under Bondi to target Trump's political foes. The top Democrat on the committee is Illinois' Dick Durbin. Here's how he kind of summed up the Democrats' view on her leadership.
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DICK DURBIN: The attorney general has systematically weaponized our nation's leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies and attack his opponents and, sadly, the American people.
LUCAS: And as Exhibit A, Democrats point to the recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey just days after the president demanded publicly that the DOJ prosecute Comey and other prominent Trump critics.
KELLY: Well, and Comey has been indicted, of course, and is not the only person the president has said should be prosecuted.
LUCAS: That's right. Two other people, notably, that the president publicly demanded by name in a social media post that the DOJ go after were New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, who's a member of the committee that Bondi was actually testifying for today.
KELLY: Which makes for some interesting dynamics, which I hope we're going to get to. But let me ask you first, this allegation that Bondi has weaponized the department, when that was put to her directly, how did she respond?
LUCAS: Well, look, she was specifically asked about a promise that she made at her confirmation hearing that she would maintain the Justice Department's traditional independence from the White House and keep politics out of investigations and prosecutions. Here's what she said.
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PAM BONDI: I absolutely have upheld that commitment, Senator. I pledged that I would end the weaponization, also, of the Justice Department and that America would once again have a one-tier system of justice for all. And that is what we are doing in this country.
LUCAS: Now, Democrats also tried to press her on her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. They tried to press her on the firing of career prosecutors and FBI officials for working in Capitol riot cases or on investigations into Trump. They tried to get answers about the department's decision to drop an investigation into Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, for allegedly taking a $50,000 cash bribe from an undercover FBI agent. She refused to provide answers. In many cases, she tried to deflect, actually, by going after Democratic senators themselves. Here's an exchange with California's Adam Schiff, who said that Bondi was personally attacking Democrats instead of answering questions.
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BONDI: Personal attacks? You've been attacking...
ADAM SCHIFF: So...
BONDI: ...My FBI director.
SCHIFF: ...So - but...
BONDI: You've been attacking my office.
SCHIFF: ...But we...
BONDI: You've been attacking...
SCHIFF: But what we're interested in...
BONDI: ...Border czar.
SCHIFF: ...What we're interested in is the answer to these oversight questions.
BONDI: What you're...
SCHIFF: So you were asked...
BONDI: No. Oversight?
SCHIFF: ...You were asked by my colleague...
BONDI: You want your five minutes of fame...
SCHIFF: ...You were asked by my colleague...
BONDI: ...Attacking good people.
SCHIFF: Regular order, Madam Chair, so I can ask a question.
LUCAS: So this was a combative hearing at times, and that exchange gives you a bit of a taste of what it was like.
KELLY: It does, indeed. OK, so that's what Democrats had on their mind. What about Republican members of this committee?
LUCAS: Well, look, there was a huge partisan divide on this. It was like two entirely separate hearings. Republicans expressed their support for Bondi, the enormous change that she's brought to the Justice Department. They argue that the department was weaponized under the Biden administration to go after Trump and conservatives more broadly. That includes information made public this week by the panel's top Republican that the FBI, back in 2023, analyzed the phone records of more than a half dozen Republican lawmakers as part of the investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. They say Bondi is ending that weaponization.
So despite concerns from legal observers and department veterans about the direction that the department is taking, Bondi has the political sort (ph) of Republicans and the president to continue what she's doing.
KELLY: Thank you, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thank you.
KELLY: NPR's Ryan Lucas. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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