Durbin Calls Out Weaponization Of The Justice Department Under AG Bondi’s Leadership One Year Since Her Confirmation

One year in, Durbin renews concerns about Bondi’s DOJ leadership.

Emily Hampsten - Office of Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin

Feb 5, 2026 5:00 PM

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WASHINGTON – In a speech on the Senate floor, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, spoke about the weaponization of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the leadership of Attorney General (AG) Pam Bondi one year since her confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

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“A year ago, the United States Senate voted to confirm Pam Bondi as Attorney General. As I said during her confirmation hearing last year, the Attorney General must be committed first and foremost to the Constitution and the American people, not to the President and his political agenda. I was unconvinced then that Ms. Bondi shared my view. Over the course of the last year, my concerns, sadly, have been borne out,” Durbin said.

Durbin noted that even before AG Bondi was installed atop the Justice Department, President Donald Trump had moved swiftly to purge DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of senior career law enforcement officials.

“In their place came partisan hacks—including a January 6 rioter who encouraged his fellow insurrectionists to murder law enforcement officers protecting the Capitol. He was shouting the words ‘kill ‘em.’ … Under the direction of Attorney General Bondi, these MAGA loyalists pounced on President Trump’s perceived enemies,” Durbin said. “In addition to the now-dismissed indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal prosecutors have opened criminal investigations into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Governor Lisa Cook, and others. The list goes on and on of the enemies of the President who are being prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Why? Not because they broke the law, but because the President believes they are his political enemies.”

Durbin continued, “And it begs the question: If the President can turn DOJ and the FBI into his own personal police force to target his political enemies, what is stopping him from targeting ordinary Americans? Tragically, we are already seeing the answer to that question in the Department of Justice’s partisan response to the Homeland Security Department’s abuses in Chicago and Minneapolis. The Department of Justice has sought to press charges against Americans who peacefully protest like Marimar Martinez in Chicago. In addition to state-sponsored violence against its own citizens, the country is less safe, as DOJ has redirected thousands of law enforcement agents to immigration-related initiatives and away from gun violence, drug trafficking, and child exploitation.”

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Durbin went on to recall that on day one in office, Attorney General Bondi created the so-called “Weaponization Working Group”—a task force to “investigate the investigators” and “prosecute the prosecutors.”

“Recent reports suggest the group will soon meet daily, with the goal of producing results in the next two months that reenergize the partisan criminal probes that only exist for the sake of one sad man’s ego and revitalize his dangerous conspiracy theories,” Durbin said.

Durbin then laid out how AG Bondi has tripped over her own feet, repeatedly—the most recent example being her mismanagement of the Epstein files.

“Let’s take a trip down memory lane: last February, the Attorney General claimed she had Epstein’s client list ‘sitting on [her] desk right now to review.’ Several days later, in a media event the White House staged, she released a number of binders of files to conservative influencers and commentators that were already largely publicly available,” Durbin said. “Then, as a whistleblower disclosure to my office revealed, in the wake of the public criticism, she pressured 1,000 FBI agents to comb through thousands of pages of documents in the Epstein files and to flag any mention of President Trump. This effort resulted in an unsigned memo released by DOJ and the FBI that walked back Attorney General Bondi’s claims and concluded that there was no ‘incriminating “client list”’ despite her statement to the contrary. And then, in December, the Attorney General broke the law when her Department failed to release the entirety of the Epstein files by the date mandated by Congress and signed into law.”

Durbin continued, “DOJ continues to slow walk the release, and what they have released has harmed survivors by not appropriately redacting their names, images, and other personal information.”

Durbin concluded by saying that the American people deserve answers about the conduct of the nation’s leading federal law enforcement officer—AG Bondi—especially in light of her refusal to answer Congress’s legitimate oversight questions and DOJ repeatedly providing false or highly misleading information, including false sworn declarations, to federal courts.

“No public servant who respects constitutional checks and balances would behave the way she has,” Durbin said. “We cannot allow the Trump Administration to stonewall or lie to its co-equal branches of government, Congress and the Judiciary.”

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