Half-Naked Squirrels

The president's (sic) lawyer

Is Pam Bondi qualified to be the attorney general of the United States? No, but she is qualified to be a dishonest and deflecting internet troll. That’s akin to what the Senate Oversight Committee got yesterday during its hearing with Bondi.

The attorney general is supposed to be non-political. They should disengage from politics and run the agency professionally. Bondi came to the hearing as a Trump surrogate. Instead of answering serious questions, she deflected and attacked Democratic senators. She acted like an internet troll, baiting her debate opponents and trying to own the libs, as trolls like to say.

One legal expert described Bondi’s performance as “remarkably, completely antagonistic.”

For example, when Richard Blumenthal (CT) questioned Bondi over her connections to a law firm involved in a merger scrutinized by the DOJ, instead of answering the legitimate question, she replied, “I cannot believe that you would accuse me of impropriety when you lied about your military service. How dare you? I’m a career prosecutor. Don’t you ever challenge my integrity.” Her integrity is highly questionable.

The Oversight Committee is supposed to have oversight. Congress funds her department. Does Bondi believe she can do whatever she wants with her agency without oversight? Apparently so because she refused to be held accountable.

She did not approach the hearing with good faith to answer the questions honestly, or even answer them at all, especially since she came armed with Cliff Notes of snark and insults.

These photos were taken during the hearing.

While Senator Adam Schiff was listing a lot of the questions she refused to answer, she interrupted with, “Do you even have a law degree?” Yes, he does, Pam. Schiff went to Stanford and Harvard. Bondi went to Florida. He’s more qualified to be attorney general than she is. Hell, Trump thought Matt Gaetz was more qualified to be AG than her. She even called Shiff, a senator for the largest state in the union, a “failed lawyer.”

These are some of the questions she refused to answer.

• She was asked whether she consulted with career ethics lawyers before approving a $400 million gift from Qatar (for which she was a paid lobbyist). This is a yes or no question. What was she hiding?

• She was asked what role she played in asking that Trump’s name be flagged in the Jeffrey Epstein files. No answer.

• She was asked whether White House border czar Tom Homan took the $50,000 from undercover FBI agents in the run-up to the 2024 election. This answer is yes. She refused to give it.

• She was asked if Homan kept the money. This was probably the most difficult question for her.

• She was asked if Homan paid taxes on the money. Again, she had great difficulty with this one.

• She was asked if career prosecutors found sufficient evidence to charge former FBI Director James Comey. This answer would be no. The former US attorney of the district resigned rather than prosecute Comey, and no career DOJ prosecutors will touch the case.

• She refused to answer if she discussed the Comey indictment with Trump, who had been posting on social media, demanding that she indict Comey.

• She was asked how the administration concluded that military strikes against civilians in international waters are legal. This is a tough question, and fair. She got the big girl job, so she should be capable of answering tough questions like this.

• She was asked whether she supported a fund for violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Yes? No? Maybe? Why did she deflect on this?

• She was asked if the DOJ had fired career professionals because they worked on Jan. 6 cases. This answer is yes, but she did things in her position that she doesn’t want to answer for.

• She was asked whether DOJ employees should have to abide by court orders. This answer should be yes.

• She refused to answer when asked about Emil Bove’s prosecutorial misconduct during his brief stint as principal associate deputy attorney general, like when he told a staffer they were going to ignore court orders. He’s now a judge.

• She refused to answer whether she fired any of the antitrust lawyers who opposed the Hewlett-Packard/Juniper merger, something she has a conflict of interest. But then again, we’re not supposed to question her integrity.

• She refused to answer why she claimed there wasn’t an Epstein client list after saying there was.

• She was asked if there was a photo of Trump with half-naked young women in the Epstein files. Again, a yes or no question that she should have answered. Now, everyone is wondering if there is such a photo since she refused to say no.

• She refused to answer if she’d release the recording of Homan accepting his bribe.

• She refused to answer whether Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, should be interviewed. Lutnick claimed that Jeffrey Epstein may have used blackmail to get a lighter sentence, and that Epstein was “the greatest blackmailer ever.” Bondi had zero interest in finding out the truth, and she deflected to Kash Patel, the shitty director of the FBI.

Bondi acted like a snotty, privileged child throughout the hearing. When Bove’s name was mentioned, she interrupted and said, “That’s ‘Hororable Judge’ Emil Bove to you, Senator.”

When Illinois Senator Dick Durbin challenged Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to Chicago, Bondi replied, “I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump.” Shit like that shows he planned ahead to be in attack mode throughout her four-hour hearing.

When Schiff asked about releasing the audio of Homan accepting a bribe, she replied, “Will you apologize to Donald Trump?” She promised to be independent during her confirmation hearing, but that snarky retort proved she was lying.

When asked about Epstein, she replied, “Did you ask Merrick Garland any of this over the last four years when he sat before you?” That is not an answer.

When asked by Senator Mazie Hirono about Homan’s bribe, Bondi criticized her for protesting outside the White House, and asked, “Does that mean you’re a member of antifa?”

Another one of her answers to a Democratic Senator that didn’t address the question was, “The personnel issue that I’m having right now is that all of my agents, all of my lawyers, are … working without a paycheck because your party voted to shut down the federal government.”

When asked if she talked to Trump about indicting Comey, she said, “I am not going to discuss any conversations I have or have not had with the President of the United States.” She was not asked to do that. She was asked only if she had any conversations about it.

She also accused Democrats of having connections to Epstein through a third-party donor, ignoring that it wasn’t a mutual friend between Trump and Epstein. There are videos of Trump partying with Epstein.

Bondi embarrassed herself and is probably too stupid to know it. She displayed a serious case of Dunning-Krueger. A real president never would have considered such a partisan joke like Bondi to be attorney general. Which Trump did with Bondi in 2013.

With comments like Trump being the “most transparent president in history” and claiming he won last year in a “landslide,” Bondi showed that she’s not working for the American people. She showed that she’s only working for Trump.

Note from an editor: I paused my email campaign for new clients before I went to the AAEC convention, but I resumed it this week. It’s almost complete as I’m doing them alphabetically, and I’m now on Texas, which brings us to the reply I got this morning from an editor in that state.

He wrote: I am truly sorry that you are so sad and unhappy. Hopefully, one day you will see Truth. Please remove this email from your list.

I replied: Please accept my apology for sending you my cartoons, and I will immediately remove you from my contact list. I only mean to send these to legitimate newspapers and journalists.
Best, Clay

Creative note: I wrote two ideas before this one, and they were all four-panel cartoons. You’ll see it soon in the next blog of roughs.

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