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Bondi hearing live updates: Bondi suggests Jack Smith's conduct is 'horrible'

Pam Bondi is getting grilled before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

ByIvan Pereira, Alexander Mallin, Peter Charalambous, and Julia Reinstein
Last Updated: January 15, 2025, 6:01 PM EST

President-elect Donald Trump's choice to head the Justice Department -- former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi -- faced questions for more than five hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Democrats asked about her vow to "prosecute the prosecutors—the bad ones," referring to special counsel Jack Smith and other DOJ lawyers who investigated Trump. Democrats on the committee also pressed Bondi on Jan. 6, the 2020 presidential election results, and how she would be independent of hypothetical Trump demands.

Republicans on the committee spent a lot of their time criticizing the DOJ under the Biden Administration, alleging it was weaponized to target Trump.

The committee will reconvene to hear from outside witnesses on Thursday.

Key Headlines

Here's how the news is developing:
Jan 15, 2025, 8:46 AM EST

Democrats to grill Pam Bondi over loyalty to Trump

Bondi – Trump’s pick to head the Justice Department – has vowed, in a 2023 interview on Fox News, to ‘’prosecute the prosecutors – the bad ones’’ who investigated Donald Trump.

Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee — whose members will question Florida’s former attorney general – has said ‘’she has echoed the President[-elect]’s calls for prosecuting his political opponents, and she has a troubling history of unflinching loyalty to the President-elect.”

President Donald Trump listens as Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, right, speaks during a meeting with state and local officials on school safety in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, Feb. 22, 2018.
Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images

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