President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Division to focus on his political opponents and lawmakers’ rising requires the discharge of extra information from federal investigations into deceased intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein took heart stage at a contentious Senate listening to Tuesday for Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi.
The listening to earlier than the Senate Judiciary Committee is the primary time since July that Bondi has confronted questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer time for the division that included deployments of federal regulation enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a rising variety of investigations introduced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi arrives to testify earlier than the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, October 7, 2025 in Washington.
Win McNamee/Getty Photos
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley kicked off the listening to with in depth remarks looking for to spotlight cases of what Republicans have labeled “weaponization” of the Justice Division underneath the Biden Administration, citing selective disclosures by FBI Director Kash Patel of the investigation into President Trump’s try to overturn his 2020 election loss.
“These are indefensible acts,” Grassley mentioned. “This was a political phishing expedition to get Trump in any respect prices.”
Particularly, Grassley singled out a well timed disclosure by the FBI Monday that confirmed former Particular Counsel Jack Smith’s investigators at one level sought restricted cellphone toll data of a number of Republican senators across the time of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
As a part of his investigation, Smith extensively investigated Trump and his allies’ strain marketing campaign on lawmakers to dam the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win — together with calls that have been made to senators after the Capitol was breached by the pro-Trump mob.
There isn’t any indication that Republican senators have been a goal of Smith’s investigation, and the toll data sought by investigators wouldn’t embrace any details about the content material of conversations they might have had.
“We’re pointing this all out as a result of we will not have this repeated in america,” Grassley mentioned. “We need to finish it proper now, whether or not we’ve got Republican or Democrat administrations.”
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Senator Chuck Grassley and Rating Member Senator Dick Durbin communicate with one another, as they attend an oversight listening to of Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi, Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 7, 2025.
Kent Nishimura/Reuters
Grassley made no point out of latest directives from Trump to have the Justice Division act “now” to hold out prosecutions of his political foes, or different cases of alleged politicization throughout Bondi’s tenure which have led to scores of exits of longtime profession officers who’ve sounded alarm concerning the division getting used as a device to enact political retribution.
Rating Democratic member Dick Durbin mentioned in his opening assertion assailed the Trump administration for the conduct in Chicago, a metropolis through which Durbin represents.
“As President Trump turns the total power of the federal authorities on Chicago and different American cities, the assault on town I’m proud to characterize is only one instance of how President Trump and Lawyer Basic Bondi shut down justice on the Division of Justice, even earlier than the president’s get together controlling the white Home, Senate and Home of Representatives shut down the federal government,” Durbin mentioned.
“The legal professional normal has systematically weaponized our nation’s main regulation enforcement company to guard President Trump and his allies and assault his opponents. And sadly, the American folks. You may have purged a whole bunch of senior profession officers because you first appeared earlier than us,” he added.
Durbin listed off the best hits for critics of Bondi’s Justice Division, to not embrace the closed investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, the Eric Adams case being dropped, the hiring of a Jan. 6 defendant who attacked MPD officers, the dealing with of the Jeffrey Epstein information, and the case in opposition to James Comey.
“What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. That is your legacy,” Durbin mentioned.
As ABC Information first reported, the transfer to hunt Comey’s indictment came visiting the objections of profession prosecutors and adopted Trump’s elimination of his appointee to steer the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Japanese District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing prices in opposition to Comey and New York Lawyer Basic Letitia James, sources advised ABC Information.
Trump ultimately put in a White Home aide and former private legal professional Lindsey Halligan to steer the workplace and transfer ahead with the case in opposition to Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of creating false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — whereas declining to indict on a 3rd false statements cost. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is about to look Thursday in federal courtroom for his arraignment.
Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi listens as President Donald Trump indicators a presidential memorandum on the demise penalty within the District of Columbia within the Oval Workplace on the White Home, Sept. 25, 2025, in Washington.
Alex Brandon/AP
Whereas sources advised ABC Information that management on the DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer information of Comey’s indictment in information interviews and social media posts.
The following week, the administration moved to fireside a prime nationwide safety prosecutor within the workplace, Michael Ben’Ary, over a deceptive social media publish that falsely urged he was among the many prosecutors who resisted charging Comey.
Ben’Ary was main a serious case in opposition to one of many alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing in the course of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Division’s management and labeled his elimination as only one in a sequence of latest strikes taken to root out profession officers for political causes on the expense of the nation’s safety.
“This instance highlights essentially the most troubling facet of the present operations of the Division of Justice: the management is extra involved with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they’re with defending our nationwide safety,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for People killed and injured by our enemies shouldn’t be contingent on what somebody within the Division of Justice sees of their social media feed that day.”
The DOJ declined to remark when requested about Ben’Ary’s letter.
These actions have brought about unprecedented turmoil on the Japanese District, which oversees a few of the nation’s most delicate nationwide safety, terrorism and espionage investigations.
Present and former officers say that turmoil has reverberated additional throughout the Justice Division’s workforce across the nation, with attorneys involved they’re going to face skilled repercussions in the event that they resist participating in politicized investigations or prosecutions.
On Monday, practically 300 DOJ staff who left the division since Trump’s inauguration launched a letter on the eve of Bondi’s listening to describing her management as “appalling” in its therapy of the profession workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White Home.
“We name on Congress to train its oversight obligations way more vigorously,” the previous staff mentioned. “Members in each chambers and on each side of the aisle should present a significant test on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we name on all People — whose security, prosperity, and rights rely on a powerful DOJ — to talk out in opposition to its destruction.”
The DOJ declined to touch upon the letter.
Bondi will possible additionally face heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein information, after the Justice Division and FBI mentioned in a July letter that no additional releases have been warranted and that there was no proof suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor women.
Democrats have accused the administration of looking for to cowl up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had previous associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.
Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 whereas awaiting trial on prices of trafficking younger women and girls, have been pals within the Nineties however the president mentioned the connection soured after Epstein poached some staff from Trump’s Florida membership after he explicitly warned him not to take action.
An effort underway within the Home of Representatives to carry a vote on a measure that might demand the administration launch everything of the information has been placed on maintain after Speaker Mike Johnson despatched the Home residence amid the continued authorities shutdown.
The latest rise in acts of political violence may even possible be a central focus of questions for Bondi. Trump has not too long ago ordered the division to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and different senior White Home officers have alleged, with out offering proof, as serving to to fund perpetrators who’ve attacked federal regulation enforcement officers dispatched across the nation.
Simply days after Trump’s feedback, a senior official within the Justice Division ordered a number of U.S. Lawyer’s workplaces across the nation to organize to open sweeping felony investigations in to the Open Society Foundations based by billionaire George Soros, naming felony statutes starting from theft, materials assist for terrorism and racketeering, ABC Information beforehand confirmed.
In a press release, the Open Society Foundations referred to as the accusations “politically motivated assaults on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Modification proper to free speech.”
In her most up-to-date appearances earlier than the Home and Senate in late June, Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes dedicated by undocumented immigrants of their states and districts that have been among the many briefing supplies she introduced along with her to the hearings.
Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi attends a oversight listening to of Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, October 7, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
She has additionally dismissed any characterization of the Justice Division showing to work in lockstep with the White Home as “politicization” of regulation enforcement. Bondi and different senior DOJ officers have as a substitute argued that the 2 federal circumstances introduced in opposition to Trump by a particular counsel underneath the Biden Administration represented a much more egregious instance of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled on the division by Trump.
“Whether or not you are a former FBI director, whether or not you are a former head of an intel group, whether or not you’re a present state and native elected official, whether or not you’re a billionaire funding organizations to attempt to maintain Donald Trump out of workplace — the whole lot is on the desk,” Bondi mentioned in a Fox Information look final month. “We are going to examine and can finish the weaponization — now not will there be a two-tier system of justice.”
