Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general, repeatedly brought up the Pennsylvania issue when she refused to answer a question about who won the 2020 presidential election during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
“I certainly accept that Joe Biden is the president of the United States,” Bondi said in response to a question from Sen. Dick Durbin (R-Ill.): top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “But I can tell you what I saw with my own eyes when I went to Pennsylvania as a supporter of this campaign… I saw a lot of things there,” Bondi said, later adding, “I saw so much.”
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, represented Trump during his first impeachment trial and in 2020 was part of his legal team that helped sow doubt about the 2020 election results. There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania, a key battleground that helped seal Biden’s presidency this year.
Bondi’s role in trying to overturn the 2020 election has emerged as one of the main points of Democratic opposition to her nomination, but it is unlikely it will prevent her from being confirmed in the GOP-controlled Senate. On Wednesday, she answered questions for nearly four hours about the Justice Department’s defense against partisan influence, potential Jan. 6 pardons and her comments on the 2020 election.
Bondi traveled to Philadelphia for a news conference outside the Convention Center the day after the 2020 election, before a winner was determined in a close race. Accompanied by Rudy Giuliani and Lara, Trump falsely declared that “Trump won Pennsylvania.” Sen. Alex Padilla (R-Calif.) asked Bondi about this statement during her questioning.
“At this point, there are at least a million votes left to be counted in Pennsylvania,” Padilla said, noting that Biden won by more than 80,000 votes. “Do you have any evidence of voter fraud or irregularities in the 2020 election, yes or no?”
Bondi was about to answer, but Padilla interrupted him.
“Yes or no? If you have no evidence, will you now retract your previous claim that Donald Trump won Pennsylvania?”
When Padilla interrupted her again, she accused Padilla of abusing her. “I guess you didn’t want to hear my answer about Pennsylvania,” she said.
The hearing also focused on whether Bondi would protect the Justice Department from political influence, and in particular whether she would postpone a protest if Trump tried to go after political opponents. Bondi declined to say outright that she would defy White House pressure, saying she would not address hypothetical issues. But she also told lawmakers that “politics will not play a role” in her leadership of federal law enforcement.
While Senate Democrats heckled Bondi during an hours-long hearing that included several heated exchanges, several Democrats confirmed her likely confirmation, including Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who said he “looks forward” to working with her.
Focus on Bondi’s comments on the 2020 election appears in the same week as issue a special counsel report detailing Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
The report described how members of Trump’s legal team considered whether they could simply throw out hundreds of thousands of votes legally cast in Philadelphia to keep Trump in power.
Report quotes Giuliani – Trump’s personal lawyer at the time – saying the idea was to “simply change the vote completely, subtract that number of votes from… deeming those votes, 300,000 votes in Philadelphia, illegal, unlawful.”
As part of her confirmation hearing, Bondi was asked whether she saw any factual basis for investigating the report’s author, special counsel Jack Smith, whom Trump has repeatedly attacked on social media.
“I’m sitting here as a candidate, senator,” Bondi said. “What I hear on the news is terrible. Do I know if he committed a crime? I didn’t look at it.
Bondi, who has represented Trump on and off for more than a decade, said the potential Jan. 6 pardon of the defendants was “at the behest” of Trump, but pledged to reconsider the cases.
Asked by Coons if Trump could run for president again in 2028, Bondi replied: “No, unless they change the constitution.”
