Dear editor,
In the past month, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has held two oversight hearings that have been televised.
Because I am retired, I had the time to watch both hearings.
Former federal prosecutor Jack Smith was asked to testify on the criminal investigation of Donald Trump relating to the January 6, 2021, incident at the Capitol building and Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked to testify on the release of the Epstein files.
Republicans were on the hunt to try to get Jack Smith to admit the investigation of Trump was politically motivated.
Democrats were attempting to get Pam Bondi to admit the Justice Department was protecting Trump from embarrassment about references to him in the Epstein files.
The hearings were a study in contrasts.
Jack Smith answered questions to the best of his ability, never strayed off the subject, and never raised his voice; he allowed Republican congressmen to interrupt him; and he showed respect to those congressmen even while his character and integrity were being attacked.
Pam Bondi, on the other hand, came out with guns drawn and began shooting immediately.
The Republicans who had attacked Jack Smith so forcefully had no questions for the Attorney General.
The Democrats had plenty of questions that she refused to answer. She repeatedly disrespected the Democratic committee members and the one sole Republican who tried to hold her accountable.
She pointed at members with her finger or her pen, rolled her eyes, shouted, and then, like her boss, resorted to calling them names like “washed-up lawyer,” “failed politician,” and “hypocrite” and accused them of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Another thing about the Jack Smith hearing was the Republicans’ outrage over the subpoenaing of their Jan. 6, 2021 phone records.
The records were obtained through a lawful subpoena signed by a judge and included only a log of the names of callers.
However, those same Republicans did not seem to be at all concerned that photographs taken at Pam Bondi’s hearing appeared to show that she had a document with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal’s search history of the unredacted Epstein files.
Pam Bondi’s attempt to continually change the conversation from the Epstein files to anything else was just, using her own words, “theatrics.”
During the hearing, she told the members that everyone should be talking about the fact the “Dow is over 50,000” and not the Epstein files.
