WASHINGTON, D.C. – While questioning witnesses during the second day of the confirmation hearing for U.S. Attorney General Nominee Pamela Bondi, U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.) questioned legal and ethics experts, as well as former colleagues of Ms. Bondi, about the pressure she will face to pursue the President-elect’s political adversaries—especially after the Supreme Court’s immunity decision has put the powers of the president above the law.
As Senator Welch outlined in his remarks, it has been the tradition of the Justice Department since the Watergate Scandal to create a firewall between DOJ and the White House. Despite this historical norm, Donald Trump has a pattern of using his power as president to pressure his previous Attorneys General to go after his opponents.
Watch the exchange here:
Welch opened his line of questioning with the following remarks: “The questions that I have are less about her and her qualifications, but more about this questions that looms out there. There is a mutual concern about not using the justice system for political reasons. And there’s a point of view with my Republican colleagues, it has been used that way in the prosecutions against Donald Trump—I don’t agree with that, but I hear them on that. And there is a concern on my part, and I think a lot of others, that Donald Trump has made very explicit statements that he intends to pursue political adversaries. And he has named them, including my colleague Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney. He will be a president who enjoys the benefit of the immunity decision by the Supreme Court. I strongly disagree with that decision. I don’t think anybody is above the law. That is the whole basis upon which our country was founded.
“But, I take him seriously when he says he wants a prosecutor to go after his political adversaries. The tradition in the Justice Department, since Watergate, has been to really create a near-firewall between the Administration, Executive and the Justice Department, because of its special role. You are law enforcement, so you know how awesome the power is that you have so you have to have restraint as well as aggression. How does an Attorney General handle a president who has already put an immense amount of pressure on Bill Barr, one of his Attorneys General, and who did it on Mr. Sessions? And shouldn’t we take seriously President Trump’s threat that he’s going to go after his political adversaries, and how do we deal with that and assess that in terms of this decision?”
Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center, testified: “As we know, in the first Trump Administration Attorney General Sessions made the decision to recuse himself from the Russia Investigation because of his work with Donald Trump during the campaign and because of meetings he had had with the Russian Ambassador during the campaign. He recognized the appearance of impropriety and the need for independence. He also appointed a Special Counsel to take over that investigation.
“Those are the kind of steps that are required when there could be pressure. And there was pressure put on Attorney General Sessions, indeed forever after that recusal decision, he fell out of favor with the President and ultimately was fired. But those are the things that an independent Attorney General needs to take seriously, needs to do, to demonstrate that commitment to independence from political influence.”
Welch responded: “What’s difficult here is that none us know—whoever is in that job and is confronted by a very-determined President Trump to do something that from the prosecution point-of-view might not be appropriate…political prosecution of an adversary for payback…
“There’s no way to know how any of us, as committed as we are, would be able to withstand that pressure.”
View Senator Welch’s questioning of U.S. Attorney General Nominee Pamela Bondi.
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