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Floor Speech

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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, in examining all of the President's Cabinet nominees, I am focused on two things: their fitness and their qualifications for the positions to which they are nominated, including their ability and willingness to put loyalty to the Constitution above loyalty to the President.

This independence is critically important for the Attorney General, our Nation's highest law enforcement officer. The Attorney General oversees thousands of career prosecutors in all 50 States, trying cases based not on politics but on facts.

However, Pam Bondi's record, her statements in her confirmation hearing, and her responses to questions for the record make clear she does not have the requisite independence to lead the Department of Justice.

In her confirmation hearing, Ms. Bondi shows she had trouble differentiating fact from fiction where her loyalty to President Trump might come into question.

Rather than attempting to assuage my concerns--concerns shared by many of my colleagues; you just heard from one of my colleagues just previous to myself--Ms. Bondi failed to provide clear and convincing answers to the following questions: whether President Biden won the 2020 election, whether she agreed with the President's characterization of January 6 felons as ``hostages'' and ``patriots,'' whether she would make good on her promise to ``prosecute the prosecutors'' and ``investigate the investigators'' by using the DOJ to go after the President's perceived political enemies.

I also asked her in writing, for the record, how she would resolve a conflict between a request from President Trump and her duty to the Constitution. Ms. Bondi provided no response, and she left the answer blank. This refusal to even try to answer the question told me a lot.

We have already seen in the 2 weeks since President Trump took office that he does not believe the rule of law applies to him. He issued an unconstitutional order on birthright citizenship. He put an illegal hold on all Federal funds. He fired or pushed aside scores of senior career FBI officials and Federal prosecutors.

Most egregiously, he issued a blanket pardon for more than 1,500 criminals convicted for their roles in the January 6 insurrection. Not content to stop at pardoning those who assaulted police officers, now he is compiling lists of FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors who did their jobs by working on January 6 cases to which they were assigned. This could be thousands of civil servants whom Donald Trump is apparently planning to punish to exact retribution.

Make no mistake, by focusing DOJ and the FBI inward on themselves instead of outward on the many threats against our country, President Trump is making our Nation less safe and sowing fear and chaos in the DOJ. When we suffer an attack, a hack, or a rise in crime, President Trump will try to blame everybody else, but he will be responsible.

As Senator Durbin so accurately put it, Donald Trump sees the DOJ as his personal law firm, but the DOJ and the Attorney General work for the people, not for the President. Any President but especially this President needs an Attorney General who will tell him when his actions break the law. What is more, the American public deserves an Attorney General who will put the law first and refuse an illegal order from the President. Ms. Bondi will not be that person. She will be yet another ``yes'' woman doing whatever the President wants her to do. The law, the Constitution, and our country will suffer the consequences.

For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote no.

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