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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, just over 8 years ago, Donald Trump assumed the Office of the Presidency for the first time. He began that administration with at least a few people of independence and stature, people that had enough of a respect for themselves and the rule of law that, when they were asked to do things that violated the law, their oath, or their own sense of decency, they said no or resigned--people like Defense Secretary Mattis, who wrote in his resignation letter:

My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.

Treating allies with respect; being clear-eyed about malign actors; advancing an international order conducive to our national security, prosperity, and values; the solidarity of our alliances--these didn't use to be novel ideas. They didn't used to be controversial ideas. What Secretary Mattis said about an ``international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values'' may also be applied to a domestic order that is respectful of our Agencies and institutions, our norms and values.

Not everyone in Trump's first administration was like Secretary Mattis. Some took much longer to realize that the President's demand for loyalty to him be placed above all else was incompatible with their own oath of office. Attorney General Bill Barr, once so desperate for a job in the Trump administration that he wrote a lengthy job application castigating an investigation he knew little about, found, ultimately, that there were lines even he could not cross, like lying about the election.

Others still, like Kash Patel, seemed never to find a demand by the President too taxing of their own moral code to raise an objection, but rather viewed any questionable order as a means of advancement.

The question we face with the nomination of Pam Bondi is, What will she do when, inevitably, she is put to the test by a President who feels unbound by law or propriety?

Her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee tells us that she will not pass the test. When asked about whether the President lost the 2020 election, she could not answer. When asked whether she would preserve evidence gathered in the January 6 investigation, she could not agree to do so. When asked about potential pardons of violent criminals who attacked police on January 6, she indignantly assured us that she would review all pardon cases on a case by case basis--a promise breached by the President so soon thereafter that her words seemed still to hang in the air.

If she could not assert her independence now, before Congress, before taking office, what hope can we have that she will do so when put to the test by the President?

When asked about this, too, she demurred: That is a hypothetical.

But it wasn't then, and it isn't now. The President has already pardoned hundreds of violent criminals. He has already issued Executive orders that violate the law and Constitution.

Would Pam Bondi have objected to the firing of inspectors general? Do any of us believe that she would?

The President has issued an Executive order attempting to amend the Constitution. A Federal judge struck down this order as presenting perhaps the simplest constitutional question he had ever heard. Could we have expected Pam Bondi to defend it? Sadly, yes.

The President issued an Executive order freezing and illegally impounding congressionally appropriated funds. Would she have uttered a word of protest? Certainly not.

Dozens of top prosecutors have already been fired, by the Department of Justice, who did their lawful duty investigating the rioters who attacked police. Would she have resigned in protest?

She has witnessed this Saturday night massacre and still wants the job. So, plainly, the answer is no.

She is no Elliot Richardson. Top-ranking FBI agents have been fired. Questionnaires have gone out to identify the hundreds--perhaps thousands--of agents who were involved in the legitimate prosecution of these felons. Would she have defended these FBI agents at the risk of her own job, as one senior FBI leader has done? Of course not, and let us not pretend otherwise.

Donald Trump only took the oath of office a mere 2 weeks ago--with an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, to faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, to faithfully execute the laws of this country that Congress passed and funded. Each day, it seems he has found new ways to bend and break those laws, to put in power unelected billionaires and political cronies to dismantle Agencies, take control of payment systems, and exact political retribution.

One after another, each of his nominees, asked whether they would oppose such conduct, has claimed that they won't engage in hypotheticals, claimed that there was simply no way the President would take these actions, stated that what the President promised to do during the campaign simply wouldn't happen. But it is happening. It has happened. His campaign of retribution is happening. His empowering of a shadow President is happening. His dismantling of congressionally approved Departments is happening.

We cannot afford an Attorney General who believes their role is to defend him rather than the American people and the democracy we have inherited from our Founders--this big, bold, brave, and improbable experiment in self-governance. We need an Attorney General with a backbone of steel, with a stature to say no, whose purpose is to enforce the laws against any lawbreaker, including the President of the United States. That person is not Pam Bondi.

Senator Rufus Choate, who once walked these halls and served in this body, reminded us nearly 200 years ago that we have built no temple but the Capitol, that we consult no common oracle but the Constitution. And what does that oracle tell us? I think maybe simply this: We have been given the most brilliant Constitution ever devised to constrain the worst impulses of human nature, but even that brilliant document will not protect us if we do not inhabit positions of great responsibility with people worthy of them, with people who view our system of checks and balances not as a weakness to overcome or to overrun but as a source of strength, who view the domestic order they produce, to borrow Secretary Mattis's words from a different context, as ``most conducive to our security, prosperity and values.''

We need an Attorney General who will stand strong when the President seeks to turn this Capitol into a rubberstamp for unconstitutional and unlawful actions, when the President seeks to empower the likes of Elon Musk to ignore laws that Congress has passed and Departments that Congress has funded, when the President ignores our allies and emboldens our enemies, when the President targets those in government who did their job to investigate crimes and malfeasance and does so to exact vengeance. Vengeance. Apart from self-aggrandizement and self- enrichment, the President's only motivation--vengeance.

Donald Trump is hoping that in the chaos of his Executive orders, of oligarchs marauding through the Agencies of government, of tariffs that turn on and off like a blinking light, that we will get lost and in getting lost, be lost. We must not be.

His actions will get worse. They will. With a congressional majority that empowers him, with appointees that embolden him, he himself will only grow more emboldened in return. His unconscionable and unconstitutional actions will multiply, and when that happens, will Pam Bondi take up her role, her duty, as the people's lawyer or will she serve as the President's lawyer as she has done before? Will Pam Bondi say no to the President's unlawful actions? no to purges of perceived political enemies? no to investigations of career officials? because if she will not say no, if she cannot say no, it is up to us today to say no. No to this nomination. No to Pam Bondi. It is up to us.

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