MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace couldn't help but notice that Attorney General Pam Bondi had a large binder of answers and personal attacks to lodge against Democrats.
While a Reuters reporter managed to capture a shot of some of Bondi's binder notes, Wallace noticed just how thick it was and how overtly partisan her talking points were.
Wallace began with a clip of Bondi flipping through her binder to read aloud Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's statement on the matter. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pointed out that it didn't answer his question.
"Another exhausting non-answer seemingly read from some sort of opposition research book that didn't meet the caliber of something on a congressional campaign from a sitting attorney general today, who was far more concerned with launching those ad hominem attacks on Democratic lawmakers, exclusively the ones asking the tough questions," Wallace said.
"Claire, let's start with you, because I think you're the only person here who may have recognized her attacks as just run-of-the-mill sort of flunky, campaign-level, although that was in her binder, along with a bunch of prepared statements," Wallace said to former Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. "I've never seen that before, have you?"
McCaskill agreed, noting that even a "low-level witness off the street" wouldn't try to do what Bondi did.
"And you're right. It's low-level BS," McCaskill agreed.
At another point in the discussion, Wallace noted the political nature of Bondi's attacks and wondered who had compiled the binder, as it would likely fall under a Hatch Act violation.
"Are you able to find out through your sources or through the press office who created the opposition research book that Pam Bondi was reading from?" Wallace asked justice and intelligence reporter Ken Dilanian. "And I asked that because I'm probably the only one who has sullied herself in the dark underbelly of politics by both working on the creation of opposition research in my years on campaigns and sort of arming policymakers with it."
She said that creating a document like that as a taxpayer-funded staffer would be illegal.
"And so I wonder if the Department of Justice would answer a call from you today about who created that book she was reading from with attacks on [Sen. Sheldon] Whitehouse on his wife's company. I mean, that is opposition research straight up. And it is a clear violation of the Hatch Act to be created by a government employee."
Dilanian explained that he could try, but that under the Trump administration, "the Hatch Act doesn't seem to be operational anymore."
Wallace then made a call for anyone at the Justice Department willing to blow the whistle to contact her. "The lines are open, as they say."
