Democrats Call Trump’s DOJ ‘Corrupt’ While Standing Knee-Deep in Their Own

If hypocrisy were a crime, half the Senate Judiciary Committee would be behind bars after Tuesday’s hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

The proceeding was billed as an oversight hearing, but what played out was a partisan ambush—Democrats flailing to paint President Donald Trump’s Justice Department as a tool of corruption and favoritism.

Their problem? Every accusation they lobbed could just as easily have been directed back at themselves. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut led the charge, pressing Bondi on supposed lobbying connections related to a series of antitrust mergers—including the Paramount-Skydance merger (which Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, quickly noted is under the Federal Communications Commission’s jurisdiction, not the Department of Justice’s), Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s merger with Juniper Networks, and others. Bondi had heard enough. 

“I cannot believe that you would accuse me of impropriety when you lied about your military service. You lied, you admitted you lied to be elected a U.S. senator,” she fired back. “Don’t you ever challenge my integrity.” 

It’s always great when a career prosecutor reminds a career politician that character matters.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, wasn’t far behind in absurdity. She also accused Bondi’s DOJ of caving to lobbyists in the HPE-Juniper case.

Never mind that U.S. intelligence literally asked that DOJ to approve the merger for national security reasons—to counter Huawei, a company controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and considered a national security threat by both parties. This merger will give the U.S. a fair shake at competing with the world’s largest telecommunications equipment company, protecting the world from the Chinese company’s dangerous, backdoor-ridden technology.

Never mind that no court would allow this merger to be blocked. HPE-Juniper will not even be the largest U.S. company in the industry when merged and won’t even reach 30% industry market share. That’s hardly a monopoly. Yet, Hirono and Blumenthal and the Democratic machine are still calling approving the deal crony capitalism.

This wasn’t an oversight hearing. It was political theater.

While Democrats grandstanded, Bondi calmly outlined the Trump DOJ’s actual mission: restoring fairness and ending the weaponization of justice. “We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime,” she said. “In eight short months, we’ve made tremendous progress.” 

She’s right. Under Bondi’s leadership, the DOJ is tackling real issues, from cracking down on fentanyl traffickers and child exploitation networks to prosecuting corruption inside federal contracting programs.

Gone are the days when the DOJ was used to prosecute political opponents, target parents at school board meetings, and blame American companies for the inflation that it caused. Remember, this was the same DOJ that sued Visa on antitrust grounds, claiming that charging 44 cents to process a $60 debit card transaction somehow “raised the cost of nearly everything.” As if the work of processing such transactions doesn’t cost anything and should be done for charity. It was an absurd attempt to turn a basic service fee in a monopoly-free payment industry that features dozens of competitors into a national crisis. 

Instead of pointing fingers at everyone else for its own problems, Donald Trump’s Justice Department is doing its job. Painting it as a corporate stooge for Big Business is laughable.

Yes, the Trump DOJ is not interested in prosecuting benign cases of private enterprise. But, as previously mentioned, the Trump Justice Department has taken plenty of actions against truly bad actors, from Google to Big Pharma to Ticketmaster. 

Anyone who heard Antitrust Chief Gail Slater’s America First Competition speech knows she’s no friend of corporate excess. She’s a corporate skeptic who believes in free markets, not favoritism, and her record this year has proven it. 

The irony is hard to miss. When Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed this week that special counsel Jack Smith secretly subpoenaed the personal cellphone records of eight Republican senators during President Joe Biden’s term, Democrats didn’t seem to care. But when Trump’s DOJ blinks, suddenly it’s “corruption.” 

The pattern is unmistakable. They call it “weaponization” when Trump enforces the law and “justice” when they weaponize it themselves. 

For years, Democrats operated under one standard for themselves and another for everyone else. They smeared their opponents as criminals, then shielded their own from accountability. They let the Bidens cash in overseas while accusing others of influence-peddling. They spent four years screaming about “threats to democracy” while trying to remove their political opponent from the ballot. 

Now that the tables have turned and justice is being restored, they can’t stand it. 

In responding to these bogus allegations, Bondi was confident, unapologetic, and grounded in facts. She knows full well that she’s not politicizing justice, she’s depoliticizing it. And that’s exactly what the Washington establishment fears most. 

The Trump administration is rebuilding a Justice Department that serves the law, not the partisan whims of any one political group. And if that makes Washington’s professional political class uncomfortable, then so be it. 

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