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

In his prepared opening statement, top committee Democrat Dick Durbin will tell Bondi, "Ms. Bondi, you have many years of experience in law enforcement, including nearly a decade of service as attorney general in one of the largest states in the nation. But I need to know you would tell President Trump 'No' if you are faced with a choice between your oath to the Constitution and your loyalty to Mr. Trump."

"For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans - Not anymore," Trump wrote in his announcement of Bondi for attorney general.

Pam Bondi has developed a reputation as one of President-elect Donald Trump's most loyal defenders -- a vocal political and legal advocate who represented Trump during his first impeachment, boosted his efforts to sow doubts about his 2020 election loss, and stood by him during his New York criminal trial. Read more about her background here.

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.”