AILSA CHANG, HOST:
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Her testimony comes at a tumultuous time for the Justice Department. Bondi has faced criticism for the DOJ's handling of the Epstein files and for the indictments against several of President Trump's perceived political enemies, just weeks after the president himself publicly called for their prosecutions. Just about a year ago, in Bondi's Senate confirmation hearing, she made this promise.
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PAM BONDI: Every case will be prosecuted based on the facts and the law that is applied in good faith, period. Politics have got to be taken out of this system.
CHANG: So how is that promise playing out? Well, we have called up Carol Leonnig to talk about all this. She's a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at MS NOW and coauthor of the book, "Injustice: How Politics And Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department." Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, Carol.
CAROL LEONNIG: Thank you. It's good to be with you, Ailsa.
CHANG: Good to have you. So can you just remind us of how the relationship between Trump and Bondi came to be in the first place, before her appointment as attorney general, because they go back a bit, yeah?
LEONNIG: They do. She was the attorney general in Florida, a very large supporter of Donald Trump's in that state, which is definitely a red state. And they had a - in addition to her support as a Republican attorney general, they had a little bit of a controversial relationship in this respect that brought scrutiny on Pam Bondi when she was the attorney general because her office had launched an investigation into a Trump-funded university and whether or not it was appropriately using its money and its tax-deferred status and delivering what it was supposed to be delivering to students. And she received a large contribution from a Trump-coordinated committee, and then the investigation ended, which caused a lot of people to question whether or not politics and donations were driving her office's decisions.
CHANG: Right. And what's your perception of why President Trump eventually chose her to become attorney general?
LEONNIG: You know, there were quite a few candidates on the block being considered. One of Donald Trump's number one priorities in his litmus test for choosing cabinet secretaries in his second presidency was loyalty, fealty, absolute obedience to his commands. And Bondi had apparently met that test and exceeded his wishes in terms of what she was willing to promise him. And she did very much deliver that in her first, very public introduction of the president to her Department of Justice employees when she welcomed him to the Great Hall at the Department of Justice headquarters. She basically said, you know, I am delighted and honored to introduce you to our new president and also to work at the direction of this president, which no attorney general had ever said. It caused a lot of mouths to sort of fall open.
CHANG: Well, let's talk about that piece by piece, this perception that Bondi is executing an agenda directly from the president's instructions. For example, Bondi and the DOJ have come under scrutiny for several cases brought against individuals whom Trump perceives as political enemies or who have done him some sort of political harm. Can you remind us, first, who those major cases center around? And how much do you believe those cases are the result of President Trump's explicit direction?
LEONNIG: I think the most clear connective tissue, Ailsa, between Donald Trump's instructions and the Department of Justice's actions under Pam Bondi are that watershed moment of the indictment of former FBI Director Jim Comey and very fast on the heels of that the indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James.
CHANG: Right. Two very vocal critics of Trump.
LEONNIG: Yes, very vocal and two people that Donald Trump, you know, had a real vendetta against - whether they had one against him is an open question. And when he sent a tweet, which may or may not have been intentionally private and a mistake to make public - when he sent a tweet basically saying - Pam, we've got to indict these people, we've got to prosecute these people, they're criminals - it didn't take very many more days before presentations were made to grand juries in Virginia. The real shocker about that, Ailsa, is career prosecutors - to go back to what Pam Bondi said in the clip that you just played...
CHANG: Yeah.
LEONNIG: ...All the decisions will be based on the facts and the law. Career prosecutors and political appointees repeatedly warned Bondi's Justice Department that the facts and the law did not back up indicting either of those people. And indeed, grand juries in the case of Letitia James twice refused to indict her on those facts.
CHANG: As someone who has studied the Justice Department for so long, how concerning is it to you to watch the nation's top justice official seemingly take orders from the president about who to prosecute and how?
LEONNIG: As a reporter, and not as a citizen of the United States, but as a reporter, it's gobsmacking (ph) to watch this happen. I've never seen a situation where a Justice Department so quickly bends at the knee to the president's whims. But that's what's happening right now. A president is acting as a king, and members of the Department of Justice are acting as basically his courtiers, you know, trying to accomplish his wishes. The proof of that is underscored by the number of political appointees and career officials who are fired when they stand up and say the facts and the law do not justify this action.
CHANG: So what will you be watching for specifically in tomorrow's hearing?
LEONNIG: I think what's so key is that the Department of Justice and Pam Bondi have an enormous territory in America, and the Justice Department and Bondi's decisions are at the heart of so many things that are controversial at the moment. You know, on the one hand, you've got Epstein. On the other hand, you have the prosecutions of political enemies of Donald Trump. But in the heartland of America, the Department of Justice and Bondi herself have made decisions declaring that people that protest immigration raids even are domestic terrorists, and the shooting of two Americans in Minnesota is really the result of the Department of Justice and the DHS working together to come down hard on those protesters. That is really causing heartburn and consternation for even Republicans who see their voters questioning, what is the Department of Justice doing here?
CHANG: Carol Leonnig is senior investigative correspondent at MS NOW and coauthor of the book "Injustice: How Politics And Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department." Thank you so much for joining us today, Carol.
LEONNIG: Thank you, Ailsa.
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