[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 22 (Monday, February 3, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S532-S533]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       NOMINATION OF PAMELA BONDI

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on another equally important matter, this 
week, the Senate will vote on the nomination of Pam Bondi to serve as 
Attorney General.
  Given the Trump administration's ongoing purge of Justice Department 
officials, I urge my colleagues to look very carefully and closely at 
Ms. Bondi's nomination. President Trump has repeatedly made it clear 
that he values loyalty above all else when it comes to Attorneys 
General.
  Don't take my word for it. Look at what happened in his first term. 
He fired his first Attorney General and forced out a second for 
insufficient loyalty; and he said as much. President Trump has said 
time and again he expects the Justice Department to seek 
``retribution'' on his behalf. In Ms. Bondi, I am afraid, the President 
has finally found someone who passes his loyalty test.
  Now, look, if you look at the resume of Pam Bondi, you will find that 
she served as attorney general for the State of Florida for two terms. 
She has experience as an attorney general of our third largest State. 
You are not only going to hear that over and over, but it appears that 
she is prepared to break with bipartisan tradition when it comes to a 
nonpartisan Department of Justice--one that upholds the rule of law and 
is free of undue political influence from the White House.
  I am not convinced that she is dedicated to these ideals. She was the 
leader in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. To this day, she 
still clings to the basic loyalty oath that was required of those who 
were a part of that effort. She refuses to acknowledge that Joe Biden 
won the Presidential election in 2020--she can't get over it--and she 
echoed the President-elect's calls for prosecuting his political 
opponents, including a pledge she made publicly that the ``prosecutors 
will be prosecuted, and the investigators will be investigated.''
  Sadly, Ms. Bondi's threat is already coming to fruition. Since 
President Trump's inauguration, his administration has purged dozens of 
senior career civil servants at the Department of Justice and the FBI, 
including longtime nonpartisan leaders of the government's 
counterterrorism and counterespionage efforts. These career civil 
servants are responsible for coordinating the Justice Department's 
fight against international terrorism and foreign spies. These removals 
substantially diminish America's ability to respond to national 
security threats. Quite simply, they are a danger to the public. The 
Trump administration's purge of these officials is a naked political 
move.
  In firing a dozen career prosecutors, the Acting Attorney General 
issued a memo that said in that memo:

       Given your significant role in prosecuting the President, I 
     do not believe the leadership of the Department can trust 
     you.

  How blunt can you be?
  Line attorneys and agents are similarly being bullied now simply 
because their assigned tasks were linked to the criminal investigation 
of the President or the January 6 riots--one of the largest 
prosecutions in the history of the United States when an 
insurrectionist mob came to the floor of this Senate,

[[Page S533]]

rifled through my desk--I saw this on tape--assumed the chair that is 
being held now by the President of the Senate, posed for pictures, made 
all sorts of signs, left notes behind, and tore up the Capitol 
Building. At the end of the day, 140 law enforcement officers were 
hurt, and 4 lost their lives. That was the reality of what happened on 
January 6.
  Do we expect the Justice Department to do nothing about the hundreds 
of people who stormed this Capitol? We saw it on videotape. Nobody is 
making this up. What they did was to prosecute them for the crimes that 
they committed. Many of them were sentenced, and many of them pled 
guilty when they saw the videotapes that portrayed exactly what they 
did on that day. The Justice Department prosecuted them, and many of 
them ended up in jail--some of them with serious sentences for their 
serious misconduct.
  Now comes the new President, Donald Trump, and on his first day in 
office, he absolves them from criminal guilt and tells them they are 
free to go.
  A question has to be asked of the American people: If someone came 
bursting into your home or your church or your school and tore it up, 
beat up those who were trying to maintain order and did it all on 
videotape, should they be held responsible for it?
  I certainly think so. That is certainly true when it comes to this 
building, which represents the symbol of America and our democracy. If 
you want to desecrate this building, you should pay the price.
  The American people deserve an Attorney General who will acknowledge 
that reality, who will protect the fundamental rights of this country, 
demonstrate independence and integrity, and remain faithful to the 
Constitution, the country, and the rule of law.
  Ms. Bondi, during the course of her testimony before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, was also asked about Kash Patel, the President's 
nominee to head up the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She made it 
clear that she supports him. I don't. I don't because he doesn't have 
the experience to hold the job. He certainly has nothing in his 
background to suggest that he can supervise 38,000 FBI agents and 
employees and 400 field offices around the world trying to keep America 
safe every single day. Yet she stood behind him.
  I fear Ms. Bondi will only protect and remain faithful to one person 
throughout this whole experience, and that is the President who is 
giving her this opportunity.
  I urge my colleagues to look carefully at her record and the record 
of Kash Patel. They are a team in this effort, and they should be held 
accountable for what they have said and written and the positions that 
they have taken in support of the President, even when his positions 
are not consistent, in my mind, with the equal and free administration 
of justice.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Britt). The Senator from Iowa.

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