JP Cooney, a former federal prosecutor turned Democratic candidate for the U.S. House in Virginia’s proposed Seventh District, rebuked his former boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, for telling a House panel on Wednesday his former division engaged in “weaponization.”
“I can tell you which administration that the weaponization was ended under,” Bondi said in a fiery exchange with Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
Cooney, a former top deputy to special counsel Jack Smith who helped prosecute President Donald Trump, was fired from the Department of Justice last February, as part of a purge at the public integrity section when Bondi took over.
He told Raw Story the Trump administration had converted the DOJ “from a tool of justice into a political tool to support Donald Trump.”
“I worked in the public integrity section for years,” Cooney said. “I served in Republican administrations and Democratic administrations.
“The Justice Department that I worked in always served the rule of law. We conducted every investigation without fear or favor. That’s no longer the case, much less with a president like this one who has converted it into his own weapon.”
On the Hill, Neguse also questioned Bondi about the hiring of the former FBI agent Jared Wise as a senior DOJ advisor, after Wise was charged with assaulting law enforcement during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“This is who you choose as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America to hire at the Department of Justice — someone on video yelling, ‘Kill ’em,’ at police officers?” Neguse asked.
“I believe he was pardoned by President Trump,” Bondi said.
“Oh, he was pardoned,” Neguse said. “… Pardoned by President Trump for his offense. Pardoned for yelling, ‘Kill ’em,’ at police officers. And yet you expect hard-working police officers across the country to believe that you take law enforcement seriously.”
Bondi offered no further comment.
Cooney told Raw Story the exchange “should tell you everything you need to know about why Americans have lost trust in the Justice Department, and the threat it poses to the public.”
‘Could not be more proud’
Smith’s election subversion indictment against Trump for conspiracy to defraud the United States, which Cooney helped prosecute, highlighted January 6 as a consequence of Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election.
After then-Vice President Mike Pence made it known that he would not join Trump’s scheme, the indictment charged, “a large and angry crowd — including many individuals whom [Trump] had deceived into believing the vice president could and might change the election results — violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding.
“As violence ensued,” Trump and his co-conspirators “exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.”
Smith moved to dismiss criminal charges arising from his work in November 2024, after Trump won re-election, then filed his final report in January 2025, before Trump returned to the White House.
A prominent target of Trump and supporters, who claim victimization, Smith testified before Congress last month, strongly defending his work and that of his team.
Cooney told Raw Story he “could not be more proud” of his work with Smith, and “could not be more proud of the integrity, independence that [Smith] displayed and that everyone in that office displayed.”
Cooney said he was motivated to run for Congress by the lawlessness of the Trump administration.
“I’m going to bring the experience that I have — 18 years at the Justice Department prosecuting cases against the most powerful lawbreakers — to bear on this unprecedented circumstance, to stand up against lawbreakers like Donald Trump, to restore civility and competence to government.”
‘Abuses of power’
Cooney also pointed to recent events in Minneapolis, saying the death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, at the hands of Border Patrol agents helped him decide to run.
“There’s no question that when I learned about the Border Patrol’s killing of Alex Pretti, a man who was engaged in lawful, constitutional activity, and I heard Secretary Kristi Noem’s despicable slander [of Pretti], I was motivated to stand up and run for office, to provide the kind of leadership that is so desperately needed,” Cooney said.
“We have a Republican Congress that is complicit in the abuses of power that Secretary Noem has carried out.”
In the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s death, Noem said Pretti had intended to kill law enforcement officers. Pretti was licensed to carry a gun which he did not draw. Agents removed it before Pretti was shot multiple times.
‘Lawless playbook’
Before he can begin to hold Trump accountable as a member of the legislative branch, Cooney will have to win election in a cycle in which Trump has signaled an intention to interfere — telling former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino that Republicans should “take over the voting” in “15 places.”
FBI agents at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, Georgia. REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer
The FBI recently seized 2020 ballots from an election center outside Atlanta, based on a search warrant containing omissions one former FBI lawyer said DOJ supervisors would typically “flag and send back.”
Cooney’s campaign rhetoric echoes the prosecutorial case Jack Smith’s team made in the indictment filed against Trump in August 2023.
“What I see now is an indication of Donald Trump’s realization that he’s lost the confidence and lost the trust of the American people,” Cooney told Raw Story.
“This is the same lawless playbook that he turned to after the 2020 election, to defraud Americans of their rightful results of that election.
“It gives me great hope for our future, because it demonstrates that Americans have lost confidence in the president and are prepared to stand up and restore us to a respected, principled and faithful nation.”
