Bondi Derides Durbin in Fiery Testimony

Attorney General Pam Bondi clashed with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on law enforcement issues at a fiery Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.

Durbin, the ranking member of the committee, questioned Bondi about the legal justification for President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to restore law and order in Chicago.

“You voted to shut down the government, and you’re sitting here. Our law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you,” the attorney general said.

“I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” the attorney general told the Illinois senator.

Bondi explained that the National Guard was being sent to Chicago to protect American citizens in the city. She complained that Illinois has taken measures to thwart federal law enforcement’s efforts to enforce American immigration law.

“The state of Illinois has a TRUST Act, which prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with our federal immigration authorities,” the attorney general said.

Bondi then elaborated on some of the threats facing the residents of Illinois.

“On Sept. 15, our partners at [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] arrested an illegal alien from Mexico for beating a 21-year-old man to death. He had been imprisoned in Illinois prior to the murder and was released under the Illinois TRUST Act,” she continued. 

Bondi explained some of the policies she was combating from the sanctuary state.

“We filed multiple lawsuits in Illinois for sanctuary policies, specifically in-state tuition for illegal aliens and obstructing employers from verifying citizenship,” Bondi told the committee before adding that Ovidio Guzman Lopez, son of the notorious drug kingpin El Chapo, had pleaded guilty to federal drug crime charges in Chicago. 

Bondi detailed the massive scale of illegal drugs that poured into the United States during the Biden administration.

“The surge of drugs in this country has been horrific over the last four years,” the attorney general said, noting that the Drug Enforcement Administration had “seized 4,500 kilos of fentanyl powder and 50 million fentanyl pills, which I said earlier represents 370 million deadly doses of fentanyl.”

The former Florida state attorney general promised to continue the fight against fentanyl and other illegal drugs killing Americans. 

The committee hearing also discussed the explosive document released to the public yesterday that revealed the FBI during the Biden administration had monitored the phone calls of several U.S. senators, including Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. 

“Gee, it sure looks like targeting political opponents to me, and yet, I haven’t heard a word from that side of the dais about any concern whatsoever,” the Missouri senator said.

Bondi explained that she could not discuss who had ordered the tapping of the federal legislator’s phones “for very good reason,” but promised to get to the bottom of the matter.

“We will be looking at all aspects of this, and I have talked to [FBI Director Kash] Patel at length about this,” she said. 

“I took office with two main goals, to end the weaponization of justice and return the department to its core mission of fighting violent crime,” the attorney general had said earlier in her opening statement.

Bondi also emphasized to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., that she was prepared to protect federal judges from threats foreign and domestic, a topic in the news after a federal judge appointed by President Joe Biden sentenced Nicholas Roske, the would-be assassin of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“Sen. Whitehouse, I would be happy to sit down with you regarding any threat to any federal judge in this country. We take threats very seriously. I will set a meeting with you, with Director [Gadyaces] Serralta of the U.S. Marshals [Service], and I will be there. And we will talk about any threats on federal judges, who threatened them or who orchestrated them,” Bondi asserted. 

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