During her confirmation hearing Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general was grilled by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., about whether she would use the Department of Justice to prosecute Trump’s enemies.
Whitehouse asked Pam Bondi, Florida's former attorney general, whether she supported Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, who has assembled what he calls a list of “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State" that should be prosecuted.
When asked whether Bondi supported Patel and his plans to go after what he characterizes as a “cabal of unelected tyrants,” Bondi said that she does support his nomination but that "here will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice.”
Whitehouse also asked whether Bondi would support using the Justice Department to go after journalists who are critical of Trump. Bondi said that the Justice Department would only go after someone who “commits a crime.”
“I believe in the freedom of speech — only if anyone commits a crime. It’s pretty basic, senator, with anything, with any victim, and this is this goes back to my entire career, for 18 years as a prosecutor and then eight years as Florida’s attorney general. You find the facts of the case, you apply the law in good faith, and you treat everyone fairly,” Bondi said.
“It would not be appropriate for a prosecutor to start with a name and look for a crime,” Whitehouse responded, adding that it’s a prosecutor's role to start with a crime and look for a name. Bondi responded by claiming that she thinks Trump was only prosecuted because of who he is, rather than for the various crimes he has been convicted of and alleged to have committed.
