Bondi faces grilling from Senate Democrats on DOJ 'weaponization,' Epstein files

President Donald Trump's tightening grip over the Justice Department to target his political opponents and lawmakers' increasing calls for the release of more files from federal investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein took center stage at a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday for Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is the first time since July that Bondi has faced questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer for the department that included deployments of federal law enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a growing number of investigations announced into Trump's political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley kicked off the hearing with extensive remarks seeking to highlight instances of what Republicans have labeled "weaponization" of the Justice Department under the Biden Administration, citing selective disclosures by FBI Director Kash Patel of the investigation into President Trump's attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.

"These are indefensible acts," Grassley said. "This was a political phishing expedition to get Trump at all costs."

Specifically, Grassley singled out a timely disclosure by the FBI on Monday that showed former Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigators at one point sought limited phone toll records of several Republican senators around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

As part of his investigation, Smith extensively investigated Trump and his allies' pressure campaign on lawmakers to block the certification of former President Joe Biden's election win -- including calls that were made to senators after the Capitol was breached by the pro-Trump mob.

There's no indication that Republican senators were a target of Smith's investigation, and the toll records sought by investigators would not include any information about the content of conversations they may have had.

"We're pointing this all out because we can't have this repeated in the United States," Grassley said. "We want to end it right now, whether we have Republican or Democrat administrations."

Grassley made no mention of recent directives from Trump to have the Justice Department act "now" to carry out prosecutions of his political foes, or other instances of alleged politicization during Bondi's tenure that have led to scores of departures of longtime career officials who have sounded alarm about the department being used as a tool to enact political retribution.

Ranking Democratic member Dick Durbin said in his opening statement assailed the Trump administration for the conduct in Chicago, a city in which Durbin represents.

"As President Trump turns the full force of the federal government on Chicago and other American cities, the assault on the city I am proud to represent is just one example of how President Trump and Attorney General Bondi shut down justice at the Department of Justice, even before the president's party controlling the white House, Senate and House of Representatives shut down the government," Durbin said.

"The attorney general has systematically weaponized our nation's leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies and attack his opponents. And sadly, the American people. You have purged hundreds of senior career officials since you first appeared before us," he added.

Durbin listed off the greatest hits for critics of Bondi's Justice Department, not to include the closed investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, the Eric Adams case being dropped, the hiring of a Jan. 6 defendant who attacked MPD officers, the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and the case against James Comey.

"What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. This is your legacy," Durbin said.

Bondi pushed back against her critics and Democrats during the hearing. In her opening statement, she framed her tenure as the "end" of weaponization of law enforcement, while reinforcing her extensive efforts to enact President Trump's agenda.

"We will work to earn that back every single day. We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime. While there is more work to do, I believe in eight short months we have made tremendous progress towards those ends," she said.

She also railed against judges who have ruled against the administration in the months since Trump took office, while highlighting the Justice Department's string of victories at the Supreme Court.

"My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump's agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach," she said.

Bondi continued to hit back at Durbin, who questioned her about the federal deployment to Illinois.

The attorney general taunted the senator about Chicago's crime rate. Bondi said that Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were on their way to the city.

"Chairman, as you shut down the government, you voted to shut down the government and you're sitting here as law enforcement officers aren't being paid. They're out there working to protect you. I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump," she said.

Durbin was taken aback by Bondi's responses.

"Madam attorney general, it's my job to grill you. Investigation of your agency is part of my responsibility. And this - this committee, you mean. I'd like the experience, but others have weathered the storm and answered questions in a respectful manner," he said.

Bondi faced heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein files, after the Justice Department and FBI said in a July letter that no further releases were warranted and that there was no evidence suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein's abuse of minor girls.

Democrats have accused the administration of seeking to cover up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had past associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.

Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, were friends in the 1990s but the president said the relationship soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump's Florida club after he explicitly warned him not to do so.

When asked on Fox News about the alleged Epstein client list, the attorney general told Fox News in February, "It's sitting on my desk right now to review."

She refused to elaborate about those past comments or the growing calls for the Epstein files while testifying.

Bondi responded to individual Democrats who sought more details by surfacing donations they allegedly may have received from Reid Hoffman -- an entrepreneur and founder of LinkedIn who is known to have past associations with Epstein.

She again surfaced Hoffman's alleged donations in an exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, in which she again refused to answer his direct questions about the Epstein files.

Trump has recently ordered the department to ramp up investigations into so-called "radical left" organizations that he and other senior White House officials have alleged, without providing evidence, as helping to fund perpetrators who have attacked federal law enforcement officials dispatched around the country.

Just days after Trump's comments, a senior official in the Justice Department ordered several U.S. Attorney's offices around the country to prepare to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations founded by billionaire George Soros, naming criminal statutes ranging from robbery, material support for terrorism and racketeering, ABC News previously confirmed.

In a statement, the Open Society Foundations called the accusations "politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech."

Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their states and districts that were among the briefing materials she brought with her to the hearings.

She has also dismissed any characterization of the Justice Department appearing to work in lockstep with the White House as "politicization" of law enforcement. Bondi and other senior DOJ officials have instead argued that the two federal cases brought against Trump by a special counsel under the Biden Administration represented a far more egregious example of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled at the department by Trump.

As ABC News first reported, the move to seek Comey's indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors and followed Trump's removal of his appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.

Trump eventually installed a White House aide and former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan to lead the office and move forward with the case against Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation -- while declining to indict on a third false statements charge. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is set to appear Thursday in federal court for his arraignment.

While sources told ABC News that leadership at the DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer news of Comey's indictment in news interviews and social media posts.

The next week, the administration moved to fire a top national security prosecutor in the office, Michael Ben'Ary, over a misleading social media post that falsely suggested he was among the prosecutors who resisted charging Comey.

Ben'Ary was leading a major case against one of the alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben'Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Department's leadership and labeled his removal as just one in a series of recent moves taken to root out career officials for political reasons at the expense of the nation's security.

"This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President's perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security," Ben'Ary wrote. "Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day."

The DOJ declined to comment when asked about Ben'Ary's letter.

Those actions have caused unprecedented turmoil at the Eastern District, which oversees some of the nation's most sensitive national security, terrorism and espionage investigations.

Current and former officials say that turmoil has reverberated further across the Justice Department's workforce around the country, with attorneys concerned they'll face professional repercussions if they resist taking part in politicized investigations or prosecutions.

On Monday, nearly 300 DOJ employees who left the department since Trump's inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi's hearing describing her leadership as "appalling" in its treatment of the career workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White House.

"We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously," the former employees said. "Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we're witnessing. And we call on all Americans -- whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ -- to speak out against its destruction."

The DOJ declined to comment on the letter.