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us justice department
'Office-Peddling' Pam Bondi Grilled by Senate as Watchdogs Blast Trump AG Pick
"The U.S. Attorney General should be the American people's lawyer—not a corporate lobbyist with a closet full of conflicted clients," said the head of the watchdog Accountable.US.
Jan 15, 2025
As President-elect Donald Trump's attorney general pick Pam Bondi faced Senate questioning on Wednesday, progressive critics opposed to her nomination cited her record as a lobbyist, her role in amplifying Trump's claims of election fraud in 2020, and her history of catering to corporate interests to argue she is unfit to lead the U.S. Justice Department.
Bondi, for her part, told senators in the first of two scheduled hearings that her Justice Department would not be used to target people based on their politics—though she stopped short of saying that the agency would not investigate foes of Trump. She also spent much of her confirmation answering questions about Kash Patel, Trump's controversial pick for FBI director whom she repeatedly defended, according to Politico.
Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for the watchdog group Public Citizen, was among Bondi's detractors who argued Wednesday that she is deeply unqualified to be the nation's top law enforcement officer.
"The U.S. Attorney General should be the American people's lawyer—not a corporate lobbyist with a closet full of conflicted clients, many of whom seek government contracts or are being investigated by the very Justice Department Bondi now seeks to lead," Golinger said in a statement.
After eight years as Florida's attorney general, Pam Bondi left that post in 2019 and joined Ballard Partners, a corporate lobbying firm that has also employed Trump's pick for White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. At Ballard Partners, Bondi worked on behalf of numerous corporate clients, including the private prison firm the Geo Group, Uber, and Amazon.
Bondi also served as a lawyer for Trump during his first impeachment trial and pushed Trump's claims of election fraud in 2020.
Tony Carrk, the executive director of the watchdog Accountable.US, went after Bondi's time as Florida Attorney General, writing that she "frequently played favorites with big corporate donors and political insiders at the expense of everyday consumers, patients, and the public good" while she held that office and that "nothing indicates Bondi would change her office-peddling modus operandi as America's top justice official."
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert, who will testify as an outside witness Thursday at day two of Bondi's hearing, said Wednesday that Bondi's record could lead to a politicization of the agency and called her "unsuitable" for the role given her ties to powerful corporations.
Meanwhile, the civil rights coalition the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, joined the pile on in a statement submitted Wednesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Ms. Bondi lacks the commitment to defending the core tenets of our democracy and the civil and human rights of all people. Indeed, her active participation in and support of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election ought to be disqualifying in itself," the group wrote.
But Bondi—who "acquitted herself coolly," according to press account—appears on track for likely confirmation.
Raising the specter of the pressure Trump has placed on his Department of Justice in the past, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) asked, "let's imagine Trump issues a directive or order to you or to the FBI director that is outside the boundaries of ethics or law. What will you do?"
"I will never speak on a hypothetical, especially one saying that the president would do something illegal. What I can tell you is my duty, if confirmed as the Attorney General, will be to the Constitution and the United States," said Bondi.
Bondi would not answer directly when asked whether Trump lost the election in 2020 and also would not denounce some of the former president's extreme stances, like calling those arrested for participating in the January 6 insurrection "hostages" or "patriots."
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'Tragic and Unjust': Trump Judges Grant Biden DOJ Request to Toss Youth Climate Case
"We will keep fighting for climate justice," said one plaintiff, "but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
May 02, 2024
A panel of three Trump-appointed judges on Wednesday granted the Biden Justice Department's request to have a landmark youth climate case dismissed, another setback for a long-running effort to hold the U.S. government accountable for damaging the planet and violating the rights of younger generations.
The order handed down by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel instructs an Oregon district court to toss Juliana v. United States for lack of standing, siding with the Justice Department's emergency petition for a writ of mandamus—which the DOJ itself describes as "an extraordinary remedy" that "should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance."
Julia Olson, co-executive director of Our Children's Trust, a public interest law firm backing the youth plaintiffs, said in a statement Wednesday that "the Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court."
"The real emergency is the climate emergency," said Olson. "This emergency was not created by these young people, who have just been stripped of their fundamental constitutional rights by one of the highest courts in our country. Children deserve access to justice."
Calling the 9th Circuit decision "tragic and unjust" and "wrong on the law," Olson said the legal fight is "not over" and stressed that President Joe Biden "can still make this right by coming to the settlement table."
"We will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
Juliana v. United States was brought in 2015 by 21 young Americans who argued the federal government has violated their "fundamental constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property" by continuing to allow the extraction of fossil fuels despite knowing their central role in destructive planetary heating.
Three consecutive administrations have worked aggressively to prevent a trial, deploying emergency legal tactics to delay and derail the youth-led case even as climate impacts became increasingly devastating in the U.S. and around the world.
Mat dos Santos, general counsel of Our Children's Trust, warned last month that "it's a mistake" for the Biden administration to "take this position in an election year, especially when young voters continue to be more and more disenchanted with the current administration and the permitting of big fossil fuel projects."
"This is an opportunity for the administration to do right by young people," he added.
Earlier this year, just before parties to the case were set to receive trial dates from a federal judge in Oregon, the Biden Justice Department filed a motion to stay the case and then another to have it tossed, drawing outrage from the youth plaintiffs. Dozens of members of Congress have weighed in on the side of the plaintiffs, arguing they should be allowed a trial to present their arguments and evidence.
Avery McRae, one of the plaintiffs, said in response to the 9th Circuit order on Wednesday that "every time we get a decision as devastating as this one, I lose more and more hope that my country is as democratic as it says it is."
"I have been pleading for my government to hear our case since I was 10 years old, and I am now nearly 19," said McRae. "A functioning democracy would not make a child beg for their rights to be protected in the courts, just to be ignored nearly a decade later. I am fed up with the continuous attempts to squash this case and silence our voices."
Another plaintiff, Nathan Baring, said that "we will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
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As Quietly as Possible, the Government is Renewing Its Assault on Your Privacy
Having failed to secure an anti-encryption bill, the FBI and justice department are now engaged in a multi-pronged attack on all sorts of other privacy rights
Jun 22, 2016
With their dangerous crusade for an anti-encryption bill in Congress all but dead (for now), the FBI and US Justice Department are now engaged in a multi-pronged attack on all sorts of other privacy rights - this time, with much less public scrutiny.
A report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office harshly criticized the FBI last week for its little-discussed but frequently used facial recognition database and called on the bureau to implement myriad privacy and safety protections. It turns out the database has far more photos than anyone thought - 411.9m to be exact - and the vast majority are not mugshots of criminals, but driver's license photos from over a dozen states and passport photos of millions of completely innocent people. The feds searched it over 36,000 times from 2011 to 2015 (no court order needed) while also apparently having no idea how accurate it is.
Worse, the FBI wants its hundreds of millions of facial recognition photos and its entire biometric database, including fingerprints and DNA profiles, to be exempt from important Privacy Act protections. As the Intercept reported two weeks ago: "Specifically, the FBI's proposal would exempt the database from the provisions in the Privacy Act that require federal agencies to share with individuals the information they collect about them and that give people the legal right to determine the accuracy and fairness of how their personal information is collected and used."
In Congress, Senate Republicans are pushing for a vote this week on controversial new warrantless surveillance measures that would let the FBI use unconstitutional National Security Letters to get email records and internet browsing history from countless US citizens - without going to a judge or court at all. The Senate leadership is bringing the measure up to vote by invoking the Orlando attack, despite the fact that we know the FBI had no problem surveilling the Orlando killer when he was previously investigated. It is a blatant attempt to exploit the tragedy in order to gain powers the FBI has long asked for (powers, by the way, the FBI is already reportedly using, despite the justice department telling them it's basically illegal).
The justice department, meanwhile, is busy attempting to implement a new rule for the court system that would make it much easier for the FBI to hack into computers worldwide - including those of hacking victims. Using the obscure process for amending the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the department has convinced the courts that they should be able to get one warrant to potentially hack thousands of computers, and shouldn't have to comply with the normal rules involving getting the court order in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation has noted, "this is a recipe for disaster," and it is being done by circumventing the normal democratic process. Several organizations (including Freedom of the Press Foundation, the organization I work for) have called on Congress to put a stop to it.
Also, in the courts, the Justice Department has continued to argue that the US government doesn't need a warrant to gather Americans' cell phone location information—even though that type of information can give authorities their precise whereabouts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The Justice Department convinced the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last month to overturn its previous ruling that police need a probable cause warrant to get such information. The court agreed with the justice department that cellphone users don't have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" around their location, even though it is some of the most intimate information that exists, giving law enforcement officials a detailed picture of your life that even your close friends and family may not know.
Last year, the FBI director disingenuously tried to claim that the pendulum "has swung too far" in the way of privacy despite the fact that the agency has virtually unprecedented access to all sorts of information on Americans. If it wasn't clear before, it should be now: they plan on using any means necessary to further erode the rights of hundreds of millions of citizens in their crusade against privacy.
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