WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi, on Wednesday refused to admit Trump lost the presidential election in 2020.
During her confirmation hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Bondi, “Are you prepared to say today, under oath, without reservation, that Donald Trump lost the presidential contest to Joe Biden in 2020?”
In a display of loyalty to Trump, Bondi, a former state attorney general and longtime Trump ally, refused to say he lost that year.
“Biden is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States,” Bondi said. “There was a peaceful transition of power. President Trump left office and was overwhelmingly elected in 2024.”
Bondi’s statement represented both a refusal to admit Trump lost and an attempt to erase the mob violence Trump unleashed on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which made the transfer of power from Trump to Biden a bit less than peaceful.
Durbin pressed, asking Bondi if she had any reason to doubt Biden won a majority of votes in the Electoral College. In her answer, Bondi hinted that the results were tainted by fraud.
“All I can tell you as a prosecutor is from my firsthand experience, and I accept the results. I accept, of course, that Joe Biden is President of the United States,” Bondi said. “But what I can tell you is what I saw firsthand when I went to Pennsylvania as an advocate for the campaign. I was an advocate for the campaign, and I was on the ground in Pennsylvania, and I saw many things there. But do I accept the results? Of course.”
Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden by 7 million votes. He then tried to overthrow the election result, including by pressuring state officials to fraudulently “find” missing votes and by encouraging his supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol and “fight like hell” while lawmakers tried to certify the results. The mob attack resulted in criminal charges against more than 1,500 Trump supporters.
“I think that question deserved a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and I think the length of your answer is an indication that you weren’t prepared to answer ‘yes,’” Durbin said.
While she’s obviously a Trump loyalist, Bondi is not one of the more controversial Trump nominees, and it’s unlikely any Senate Republicans would vote against her, meaning she will likely be confirmed.
Later in the hearing, she spoke in favor of the idea of an independent Justice Department, but wouldn’t commit to disobeying an improper directive from the president ― a question she deemed overly hypothetical. She said she would return federal law enforcement to its mission of fighting crime, echoing Republican claims that the department had been weaponized against conservatives.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) asked about the election again, but Bondi wouldn’t budge.
“I can say that Donald Trump won the 2024 election. I may not like it, but I can say it,” Hirono said. “You cannot say who won the 2020 presidential election.”
Bondi didn’t respond.
