Bondi spars with Schiff at testy confirmation hearing: ‘You were censured’

Pam Bondi, President-elect Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice, was involved in a sharp clash with Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., on Wednesday as the California senator quizzed Bondi over whether she would prosecute Trump’s political opponents.

Schiff, a vocal critic of the president-elect, asked Bondi about whether she would investigate former Special Counsel Jack Smith and also former Rep. Liz Cheney.

“I’m asking you sitting here today whether you are aware of a factual predicate to investigate Liz Cheney,” he said.

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Pam Bondi, President-elect Trump’s choice to lead the Justice Department as attorney general, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearing at the Capitol on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

“Senator, no one asked me to investigate Liz Cheney, that is a hypothetical,” she said.

She then turned the tables on Schiff, noting the crime rate in California.

“You know what we should be worried about? The crime rate in California is through the roof. Your robberies are 87% higher than the national average,” she said. “That’s what I want to focus on, senator.”

Schiff said that Bondi’s answers suggested she doesn’t have the independence to say “no” to the president. He then asked her if she would tell Trump he lost the 2020 election. Bondi accused Schiff of “playing politics” and of leaking former Rep. Devin Nunes’ memo.

“What I can tell you is I will never play politics, you’re trying to engage me in a gotcha,” she said.

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Then-Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks to reporters as he departs the final meeting of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 19, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Schiff shot back, asking her if she would advise against blanket pardons by President-elect Trump and suggesting she would not be able to look at every file on day one.

“You’ll be able to review hundreds of cases on day one. … Of course you won’t,” Schiff said.

Bondi was furious at Schiff’s comments.

“I’m not going to mislead this body or you, you were censured by Congress, senator, for comments just like this that are so reckless,” she said. 

Schiff was censured in 2023 for promoting claims that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia, a vote that made Schiff just the third member of the House to be censured since the turn of the century.

The incident was one of a number of sharp exchanges that the former Florida AG had with Democrat lawmakers. She was asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., about the weaponization of the DOJ.

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“It would not 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 look for a name. Correct?”

Bondi responded by highlighting the federal government’s investigations into Trump.

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“Senator, I think that is the whole problem with the weaponization that we have seen the last four years and what’s been happening to Donald Trump,” Bondi said.