Democrat Says He’s ‘Still Considering’ Voting to Confirm Pam Bondi: It’s a ‘Close Call’
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told CNN on Thursday that he was “still considering” voting to confirm President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee Pam Bondi.
Bondi, who previously served as attorney general of Florida, was grilled on Wednesday by Democratic senators over her past representation of Trump during his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election, the president-elect’s ongoing denial of President Joe Biden’s victory in that race, and Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel to head the FBI.
Coons appeared on CNN Newsroom Thursday afternoon and was asked by Brianna Keilar what he thought about Bondi so far and if he was considering supporting her nomination.
The senator said that in his private meeting with Bondi and then again at the confirmation hearing Wednesday he said to her “the most important thing I needed to hear from her was whether or not she would be independent, whether or not she would protect the Department of Justice from direct interference by the White House or President-Elect Trump.”
“And she failed to answer that in the sort of clear, forceful and direct way that I expected,” Coons continued, “because, frankly, her predecessors — Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions and Attorney General [Bill] Barr in the first Trump administration — ran into trouble with President Trump when he didn’t like things that they did to show and to reinforce the independence of the Department of Justice.”
Keilar noted that Bondi had vowed to adhere to the standing policy of separation between the DOJ and White House, but “you clearly did not find that satisfactory,” and asked the senator to be “specific” about what he heard or didn’t hear that “didn’t meet that bar.”
Coons replied that he had to monitor Bondi’s hearing concurrently with Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) hearing for secretary of state, so he asked his legal counsel to get him the transcript so he could catch the parts of the Bondi hearing missed and “go through the entire hearing and make sure I’m giving her a fair shot.”
He noted that he had supported “a number of Trump’s Cabinet picks last time where I thought they were qualified, had good integrity, had the appropriate policy views” — pointing out that Jim Mattis got 98 votes in the Senate for secretary of defense, showing he had nearly unanimous bipartisan support. To the contrary, “I don’t think that’s going to happen with Pete Hegseth, nor should it, given his lack of experience, relevant senior management experience, and the questions about his character,” said Coons.
Regarding Bondi, he said that he was “looking for a clear answer when I asked her if a group of career Department of Justice lawyers brought to you a criminal charge that’s well predicated, well-founded, and the White House directed you not to support that investigation, not to allow those charges to be brought — what would you do?”
“Now, I want to go back and review the transcript,” said Coons. “But I wasn’t satisfied. My recollection is of the answers I got at the time — and I want to make sure I’m being fair here — but she hedged and she hawed.”
He praised Bondi for giving “clear and good answers to my first two questions” (“Can President Trump run for a third term?” “No,” she said. “As a matter of constitutional law, who’s your client?” “The people of the United States and the Constitution.”) and so her nomination was “one where I’m still considering and want to make sure that I review exactly what she said in that hearing.”
“There are things that were positive about her record,” Coons concluded, “working on criminal justice reform, working on combating the fentanyl and opioid epidemic, and working to combat human trafficking. So I do think this is a close call.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
