Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) expressed concern Tuesday over President Trump’s apparent use of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to prosecute political rivals, something he and his colleagues have “real questions” about.
Booker’s remarks came after Attorney General Pam Bondi testified earlier Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats later described the hearing as “aggressive” and “combative.”
“We have real questions about using the Department of Justice as an arm of the president, as his personal attorneys, to prosecute his personal political vendettas, to pull people away from the kind of crimes that we want solved and instead focus on people like [former FBI Director James] Comey and other political targets of his,” Booker told MSNBC’s Ali Vitali.
“He’s not hiding it,” the senator continued. “He’s being very open. He’s literally tweeting at the attorney general of the United States of America, telling her to ‘take out my enemies’ in a prosecutorial manner.”
The New Jersey Democrat also called the heated exchanges with senators “very unfortunate.”
“I’ve never seen [these] kind of personal attacks … just not even coming out of the box,” Booker added. “Attacking senators in a very personal manner. That’s not the way it should be done. We have a responsibility, actually, as spelled out in the Constitution to provide oversight and checks and balances.”
During the hearing, Bondi faced questions over the recent indictment of Comey on charges of making a false statement as well as another for obstruction of a congressional proceeding in connection with testimony he gave before the Senate in 2020. He pleaded not guilty during an arraignment Wednesday.
President Trump’s ramp up of immigration enforcement efforts across the U.S., including in the Golden State, were also on the agenda.
The attorney general turned her ire on Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) during the proceeding, claiming he did not care about his home state and that California’s violent crime rate is “currently 35 percent higher than the national average.” She also called out the lawmaker after he was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security press conference earlier this year.
A shouting match between the two forced Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s chair, to intervene.
Bondi also accused Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) of accepting campaign contributions from Reid Hoffman, a major Democratic donor who has been accused of having ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Whitehouse later told CNN that the claim “simply isn’t true.”
“All they had to do was go and look at my public campaign finance reports and see that this individual appears on them nowhere,” Whitehouse told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday. “So, she went off into the salacious discussion, she went off into the false accusations about campaign contributions.”
The DOJ has also been under scrutiny over its handling of files related to Epstein’s sex trafficking case during its investigation into the deceased financier.