During a confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans questioned former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi — President-elect Donald Trump's pick for U.S. attorney general. The hearing came only a day after the confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who Trump has chosen for defense secretary.
Elizabeth Warren, Jacky Rosen, Kristen Gillibrand, Mazie Hirono and other Democratic senators grilled Hegseth with a vengeance, making it obvious that they see him as woefully unqualified to lead the Pentagon. But MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin, in a biting opinion column, argues that Democrats dropped the ball when they questioned Bondi and didn't do nearly enough to highlight her flaws.
"Though Bondi's confirmation may be as good as sealed," Rubin laments, "it doesn't mean (Senate Judiciary) Committee members' questions were unimportant. On the contrary, this was Democrats' opportunity to showcase Bondi's history of election denialism, willingness to excuse January 6 offenders, and the limits, if any, to her fidelity to her former client, Trump, whom she defended in his first impeachment trial."
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Rubin continues, "Many of those Democratic senators, including Sens. Dick Blumenthal, Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar, are themselves experienced former federal and/or state prosecutors….. Yet sadly, through questions that would make courtroom veterans and young prosecutors alike cringe, some Committee members allowed a prepared Bondi to elude clear statements about many of those concerns."
The MSNBC legal analyst argues that "one of the most glaring examples" of Democrats dropping the ball during the hearing came when Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois "engaged Bondi about whether Trump lost the 2020 election."
Rubin points out that "a smooth Bondi offered many of the right bromides, noting that she 'accept(s) the results" of that election and that Joe Biden is our president" — and Durbin, according to Rubin, failed to show how much of an election denier she was in 2020.
"Whitehouse, the (Senate Judiciary) Committee's sharpest observer of legal ethics, or lack thereof, similarly stumbled when asking Bondi to pledge the Department of Justice would never have, much less enforce, the sort of enemies list FBI nominee Kash Patel has boasted of on TV," Rubin writes. "Sure, Whitehouse got Bondi's assurance that, if confirmed, she would never have a so-called enemies list. But his insistence on form obscures a larger problem: Neither Trump nor anyone else in his administration needs an actual list to exact retribution by prosecution."
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Lisa Rubin's full MSNBC column is available at this link.