SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
President-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, was on Capitol Hill today for her confirmation hearing to lead the Justice Department. Trump tapped Bondi for attorney general after his first choice, former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, withdrew under pressure. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas has been watching and joins us now. Hey, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
DETROW: So a lot of Americans probably still aren't that familiar with Pam Bondi. Why don't you start by walking us through her background?
LUCAS: Unless you're from Florida, yeah, you probably don't know who Bondi is. But she was a longtime prosecutor, a local one in Florida, in the Tampa area. She did that for almost two decades and then was elected to be the state's attorney general. And she served in that post for eight years. So she has the sort of resume that would make her qualified to lead the Justice Department.
She's also known Donald Trump for a long time. She's been his - a vocal supporter of his. She spoke on his behalf at the Republican National Convention in 2016. She served as one of Trump's personal attorneys during his first impeachment trial in the Senate. She also pushed false claims of vote fraud in the 2020 election, and now we see her here as his nominee for attorney general.
DETROW: And this is a big job. And when it comes down to it, the attorney general's mission is to uphold the rule of law. What did Bondi say in today's hearing about her approach?
LUCAS: Well, she leaned heavily into her experience as a prosecutor in Florida - the work she did there on crime, on combating the opioid crisis, on human trafficking. Here's how she described what her focus is going to be if she's confirmed.
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PAM BONDI: My overriding objective will be to return the Department of Justice to its core mission of keeping Americans safe and vigorously prosecuting criminals.
LUCAS: She said that includes what she called getting back to the basics - gangs, drugs, cartels, the border, foreign adversaries. She said that's what the American public expects and deserves. She also said this.
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BONDI: I will fight every day to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice and each of its components. The partisanship, the weaponization will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all.
LUCAS: Now, Republicans and Trump, as well, of course, have claimed that the current Justice Department has been weaponized against conservatives and against Trump in particular, with the two federal cases that were brought against him. For its part, though, I have to say the Justice Department denies those allegations. It is worth pointing out that the department prosecuted President Biden's son as well as prominent Democratic members of Congress during the Biden administration.
DETROW: Trump has said a lot about what he wants the Department of Justice to do when he takes office again, and Democrats had a lot of questions about Bondi and whether she can be an independent attorney general. What did she say about this?
LUCAS: Right. We heard Democrat after Democrat push her on this very question. And that's because of her close ties to Trump and because she has said that the folks who prosecuted Trump will be prosecuted themselves. At today's hearing, Bondi said a lot of things that you normally hear from a nominee for attorney general. She said the department must act independently. The law must be enforced fairly - that politics can't play any part, that the American people are her client.
But when she was asked directly what she would do if Trump told her to investigate his perceived enemies - former special counsel Jack Smith, former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, attorney general Merrick Garland - whether she would do so, she didn't answer directly. Here's one exchange she had with Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono.
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MAZIE HIRONO: Is Jack Smith one of those bad prosecutors that you will prosecute as AG?
BONDI: Senator, you hesitated a bit when I said, the bad ones. Every decision...
HIRONO: Sometimes badness...
BONDI: ...Will be made...
HIRONO: ...Is in the eye of the beholder. I'm just asking whether you would consider Jack Smith...
BONDI: Senator...
HIRONO: ...To be one of the people. How about Liz Cheney?
BONDI: Senator...
HIRONO: How about Merrick Garland?
BONDI: I am not going to answer hypotheticals.
LUCAS: As testy as that was, Scott, it's important to remember Republicans have the majority in the Senate, and they appear to be united behind Bondi's nomination.
DETROW: That's NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thanks, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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