At last Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) demanded AG Pam Bondi speak to him about President Trump's plan to accept a plane as a gift from Qatar.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Days into the second Trump administration, Attorney General Bondi's Department of Justice, I'm afraid, is resisting this committee's efforts at oversight.
00:09To date, I have sent 18 oversight requests to the Department of Justice, received two responses, and they were cursory.
00:17One involved a simple records preservation request.
00:21It took the department 76 days to respond, and they wouldn't even commit to preserving the records.
00:28Contrast this with the Justice Department's response to Chairman Grassley.
00:33By your count, you've received responses to almost half of your letters, and the department has provided thousands of patients of documents that you've requested.
00:42During my four years as chair of the committee, I pressed the Biden Justice Department to respond to oversight requests from Democrats and Republicans alike.
00:50In June 2021, only five months into the Biden administration, I convened a bipartisan meeting between Judiciary Committee members and Attorney General Merrick Garland to discuss the need to respond to committee's requests.
01:06I restored the committee's longstanding tradition of holding regular oversight hearings.
01:13At this point in the Biden administration, we had convened oversight hearings with the FBI director and the Bureau of Prisons, and I held a Justice Department oversight hearing with just Attorney General Garland a few months later.
01:26Why does this committee's oversight of the Justice Department matter?
01:30Let me take a moment to briefly discuss my latest request to Attorney General Bondi.
01:36As President Trump confirmed a few days ago, his administration is in talks with the state of Qatar to receive a private jet as a gift from the royal family.
01:47This aircraft would be retrofitted to act as Air Force One for the remainder of Trump's term in office,
01:53and then ownership would be transferred to Trump personally and the Trump Presidential Library Foundation.
02:01The president claimed it would be, quote, stupid to say, no, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane.
02:08What the president failed to say was that it would cost American taxpayers more than the value of the airplane to outfit it to be Air Force One.
02:17And of equal importance, the Constitution, which we've all sworn to uphold and defend, is expressed on the issue of gifts or emoluments from foreign sources.
02:30The Constitution gives Congress the power to control whether any officer of the United States, including the president, may accept a gift from, quote, any king, prince, or foreign state.
02:42This gift clearly violates the Constitution, and the laws enacted by Congress to govern such gifts.
02:51Yet Attorney General Bondi reportedly produced a legal memorandum concluding that it would be, quote,
02:56legally permissible, close quote, for the president to accept this airplane from this foreign power.
03:03This committee and the American people need to see her legal rationale that purportedly permits this unprecedented gift.
03:12I've requested that memo be produced.
03:15There are also grave concerns with Attorney General Bondi participating in any matter involving the state of Qatar.
03:22Given that she was a registered foreign agent of that government who lobbied the statutory government prior to her confirmation as Attorney General,
03:33there are obvious questions to be asked and answered.
03:36During her confirmation process, Attorney General Bondi failed to list the state of Qatar as a conflict of interest.
03:44When I asked her about it, she refused to commit to recusing herself from matters involving this foreign power.
03:51She claimed she would, quote, consult with career ethics officials within the Justice Department and make the appropriate decision.
03:59However, Trump political appointees have conveniently removed the senior career ethics officials who would advise on such decisions
04:11and put their duties in the hands of two inexperienced political appointees beholden to the Attorney General.
04:17In light of these significant ethical concerns, I've also requested that Attorney General Bondi provide information related to any ethical consultation on her involvement in the Trump administration's consideration of this gift.
04:32Let's not forget that President Trump confirmed reports of this gift merely weeks after his family personally landed a deal for a Trump-branded luxury golf resort where?
04:44For years, the Republicans have baselessly claimed that President Biden engaged in criminal wrongdoing,
04:52but Republicans continue to turn a blind eye to President Trump pocketing millions and millions of dollars at the expense of American people while testing the limits of the Constitution.
05:03Mr. Chairman, I have two requests.
05:06First, let's convene a meeting with Attorney General Bondi as soon as possible to discuss responding to our oversight request,
05:13as I did with Attorney General Merrick Garland.
05:16Second, it's imperative that we hear from her as well, and FBI Director Patel under oath.
05:22I hope that we can convene these oversight hearings as quickly as possible.
05:27I yield.
05:28Can I respond or ask you a question?
05:30Sure, go ahead.
05:31Is that, you mean beyond our regular oversight hearings that we have with the Attorney General and the FBI Director or part of that?
05:39Do you remember when Biden took office and we raised a, I think you led the, and we all joined in,
05:46the bipartisan request that they answer our requests, our letters and such?
05:51And you didn't like the way you were treated.
05:53I didn't like the way you were treated.
05:55So we brought Merrick Garland in and personally talked to him on a bipartisan basis,
05:59our relationship with the Department of Justice.
06:01I think we need to do it again.
06:03I want to respond to what you said about oversight letters.
06:09First of all, I want to make it very clear that I think every member of Congress,
06:14not just Senator Durbin as ranking member or my as chairman,
06:19ought to get answers to your oversight letters.
06:22The other thing is I think I backed that up with my actions way back in 2017
06:28when the first Trump administration said that they were only going to answer letters
06:34from chairmen of committees, which means that about 80% of the members of the Congress
06:40would never get answers to their letters.
06:42And I did that not only by writing and getting that reversed by that administration.
06:49Now, maybe that reversal didn't do much good, but we still got it reversed.
06:53And I testified before the House Oversight Committee,
06:57or maybe it was the Judiciary Committee on the very same subject,
07:01that not only chairmen but ranking members, but all 535 members of Congress
07:07are entitled to answers to their letters.
07:10Now, I'd like to respond to what you said.
07:13During the 117th Congress, when I was ranking member of this committee,
07:18at many executive committee meetings,
07:21I raised issues with the Biden Justice Department
07:24non-responsive to my oversight letters.
07:27I repeatedly asked Biden Justice and FBI
07:30for in-person meetings to get answers, but that never happened.
07:34The committee did convene one fairly brief phone call
07:38with committee members and Attorney General Gardner.
07:42I'll have some statistics here.
07:44I don't think that changed a thing.
07:46The committee's lack of further effort obviously resulted in the Biden Justice Department stiff-arming us on this committee.
07:56Take, for example, my 144 outstanding justice oversight letters.
08:01Not once did I get a fully responsive production from the Biden Justice Department.
08:07So let's not pretend for a minute that last administration was a benchmark for responsiveness.
08:14Moreover, last Congress, the Biden Justice Department produced a classified report about the John Durham investigation.
08:23As you all recall, that investigation further unpacked the already discredited crossfire hurricane investigation.
08:32The Biden Justice Department gave access to that classified only to the chairman, ranking member, and one staffer for each.
08:43Everyone else was boxed out.
08:45When I became chairman, I renegotiated those terms to include all members of this committee, Republican or Democrat,
08:53and a staffer for each.
08:54And I made sure that the Justice Department bring that document here to the Senate.
09:00And I demanded that members and staff be allowed to take notes.
09:04Notes weren't allowed that Congress, weren't allowed last Congress, the Justice Department and intelligence community relented.
09:14So things have already begun to change for better with this administration and this Congress.
09:20And whatever you want me to do, help you get answers to your question, I will be glad to do it.
09:27It's my responsibility.
09:28As you said, you contacted Garland for us.
09:33Chairman, I did.
09:35And I do it again.
09:36And I do it for any member of the committee to get an answer.
09:38And what we're facing right now with this gift from Qatar of a plane worth $400 million or whatever it is,
09:46it's entirely appropriate for us to ask the Attorney General for a copy of the memorandum where she said it was legally permissible
09:54for this administration to take possession of that airplane.
09:58And the fact that she was a foreign agent of this government, Qatar, that she was a paid lobbyist for that government as well,
10:05raises some ethical issues that need to be addressed directly.
10:09It's timely.
10:10We should do it.
10:11To ignore it is to walk away from our responsibility.
10:14I want to speak about that in my issue, not directly to what you just said.
10:22And I don't know why that document shouldn't be made available,
10:28but I think I need more reason before I can say that with the certainty that you'd like to have me say it.
10:36Mr. Chair, down here, Tom Tillis.
10:40You're right.
10:42The other Tom.
10:43We look a lot alike.
10:43I'd like to speak first, and then I'll call on anybody that wants to speak.
10:48I find it interesting that my Democrat colleague continued to bring up the emolument clause regarding Trump.
10:55They did so in his first term and have done so again with respect to the airplane.
10:59Yet my Democrat colleagues never cared about my and my emolument clause oversight during the March 2016.
11:06At that time, I wrote the Obama Justice Department. That letter was based on Senate Secretary Clinton's 2009 to
11:132013 financial disclosure when she was secretary of state.
11:18Those disclosures showed her husband participated in at least 62 events in foreign states.
11:24Some of those were speaking events in connection with foreign governments, and some speaking events were financially supported by foreign governments.
11:33For example, and at least two occasions, Bill Clinton received hundreds of thousands of dollars for appearances sponsored by Middle Eastern governments.
11:42Bill Clinton also received two hundred thousand dollars for a speech connected to the Chinese government.
11:48In another example, Bill Clinton received almost two hundred thousand for speech sponsored by a foreign city.
11:55In at least one example, Bill Clinton received five hundred thousand dollars for a speech in Moscow.
12:01That speech was funded by the Russian Investment Bank, whose senior members included former Russian intelligence personnel.
12:09I wrote about that example in twenty seventeen Hillary and Bill Clinton were married and she was secretary of state when all that money was made.
12:18Thus, it was a joint income.
12:22As my investigation work has shown, Hillary Clinton directly received money from foreign governments while secretary of state.
12:30Moreover, Bill Clinton's speaking fees appear to have increased from one hundred and fifty thousand to sometimes five hundred thousand or even seven hundred fifty thousand when Hillary became secretary of state.
12:43I don't recall hearing my colleagues on the other side of the aisle showing any interest in these apparent violations of emoluments when Democrats filed suit against President Trump in his first term.
12:58They argued before the courts that foreign involved emolument clause, quote, regulates the private conduct of federal officials and the whole they claim he was violating the clause.
13:12Through his private businesses and so Congress couldn't use the, quote, power of the purse, unquote, to correct things.
13:21Well, here's.
13:22Here, that's not the case.
13:26Now they're arguing he's violating that Trump's violating the emolument clause or what clearly isn't for his private use was instead a gift to the United States.
13:36In any event, when an emolument clause violation occurs, a remedy is to disgorge the emolument to the federal government.
13:46Here's an example with Trump and unlike Clinton, the federal government would be a recipient of the airplane and the plane reportedly won't be used by Trump outside of government.
13:57And rather, it may be parked in a presidential library, which is ultimately operated by National Archives.
14:05Senator Coons, you want.