Pam Bondi, Donald Trump’s nominee for the next U.S. attorney general, repeatedly refused to explicitly state that the president-elect lost the 2020 presidential election while she was grilled under oath during her Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
Asked by Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin whether she can say whether Trump lost in 2020, Bondi did not say no.
“President Biden is the president of the United States, he was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States,” she replied.
She said Trump “left office and he was overwhelmingly elected in 2024.”
Bondi suggested she claims to have seen evidence of fraud in Pennsylvania despite Trump’s own Justice Department, legal counsel and courts across the country finding no such thing to legitimize his narrative of a “stolen” and” rigged” election.
“Do I accept the results? Of course I do,” she said. “No one from either side of the aisle should want there to be any issue with election integrity.”
“I think that question deserved a yes or no,” Durbin replied. “I think the length of your question means you weren’t prepared to say yes.”
Asked again by Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono, Bondi replied: “Joe Biden is the president of the United States.”
Hirono said there is a difference between acknowledging who is president and who won.
“You can’t say who won the 2020 election. It’s disturbing you can’t give voice to that fact,” she said.
Bondi did not respond.
Throughout her testimony, Bondi committed herself to the Constitution and to what she called “back to basics” prosecutions and investigations at the Department of Justice, striking at what she has called the partisan “weaponization” of the agency against perceived political enemies — echoing claims from Trump and his allies who have characterized the federal indictments of the former president has a politically motivated conspiracy.
But she did not explicitly rule out prosecuting Trump’s targets after senators asked her to explain her statements that “prosecutors will be prosecuted” under his administration.
The former Florida attorney general also repeatedly defended Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, who has vowed to dismantle the agency and threatened to “come after” Trump’s perceived enemies.
