'Brazen' 'Shameless' 'Verifiably false': Nicolle SMASHES Pam Bondi's testimony

It wasn't the first lie ever told before the United States Senate, and it certainly won't be the last. But what Attorney General Pam Bondi said before the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon may very well go down as one of the most brazen, most shameless, most verifiably false statements ever uttered in that setting. Quote, the two-tiered system of justice is over. In fact,

if Bondi's on the record testimony today served to prove anything out in public, anything at all, it is that a two tiered system of justice has very much been operationalized is the new reality in the United States of America right now. Just ask former FBI Director Jim Comey, whose recent federal indictment initiated mere days after a public pressure campaign, was a frequent topic of inquiry this afternoon.

Again and again and again, Bondi refused to answer questions on the matter, questions about Eric Siebert. He's the now former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. He was forced to resign after he concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to

indict Jim Comey. And questions about potential coordination between Donald Trump and the Department of Justice.

Watch. The night before James Comey's indictment, you had dinner with the president of the United States. Pretty intimate group.

Actually, there were a lot of people there that night.

Was James Comey discussed at that dinner?

I love that picture. That's a great picture. And there were a lot of people there that night. I think the entire cabinet was there.

Did you discuss James Comey with the President of the United States?

He was sitting just to your left.

Well, two seats down. Yes, two seats down, yes. Two seats down. And I am not going to discuss any conversations I've had or not have with the President of the United States.

Because the American public is entitled to know, Madam Attorney General, whether you took instructions from President Trump after he told you very directly to indict James Comey, which is weaponization of the Department of Justice.

Her refusal to answer legitimate questions, and if anything, to seem to make a mockery of the setting and the body itself, and to refuse to address those questions regarding ongoing controversies at the Department of Justice wasn't just focused on the Comey prosecution.

It extended to the latest reporting on Donald Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, and allegations that he accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents last year. What became of the $50,000anch recently stated, the investigation of Mr. Homan was subjected to a full review by the FBI, agents, and DOJ prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing.

And that was not my question. My question was, what became of the $50,000 in cash that the FBI delivered, evidently in a paper bag, to Mr. Homan?

Senator, I'd look at your facts.

I can see I'm not going to get a straight answer from you to a very simple question.

By the FBI agents and the DOJ. They found no credible evidence of wrongdoing. You know, you're very concerned about money and people taking money and you ran against

dark money.

Wait a second, wait a second. You work with dark money groups all the time. Senator, I would be more concerned if I were you when you talk about corruption and money

that you, that when you pushed for legislation that would subsidize your wife's company. The questions here are actually pretty specific so having you respond with completely irrelevant far-right internet talking points really is not very helpful here.

Another exhausting non-answer seemingly read from some sort of opposition research book that didn't meet the caliber of something on a congressional campaign from sitting Attorney General today, who was far more concerned with launching those ad hominem attacks on Democratic lawmakers exclusively, the ones asking the tough questions, than she was in doing what her job says she should do, which is answer questions in that setting, and what she said she would do, which is to end a two-tiered system of justice.

It's where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. MSNBC Justice and intelligence correspondent, Ken Delaney, is here. Also joining us, former top official at the Department of Justice, MSNBC Justice and intelligence correspondent, Ken Delaney, is here. Also joining us, former top official at the Department of Justice, MSNBC legal analyst, Andrew Weissman is here, and former Democratic Senator, MSNBC political analyst, Claire McCaskill is here. Claire, I'm going to start with you because I think you're the only person here who may

have recognized her attacks as just run-of-the-mill sort of flunky campaign-level oppo that was in her binder along with a bunch of repaired statements. I've never seen that before, have you?

Oh no, I've never seen anything like this by a low-level witness off the street, much less the attorney general, the sitting attorney general of the United States. And you're right, it's low-level oppo BS. But here's the thing that's stunning about her testimony today.

I am shocked that no Republican on the committee spoke up when the Attorney General of the United States spent the entire time of her questioning by Democratic senators, screaming, refusing to answer basic oversight questions, and attacking them with ad hominem, not factual attacks that were personal in nature. And no one said a word on the Republican side, especially the chairman of the committee Chuck Grassley. This never would have been allowed to go on when I was in the United States Senate. There would have been a bipartisan effort to stop that witness in their

tracks. That's how far the Republican Party in the United States Senate has fallen and the members of that Judiciary Committee with an R behind their names. They are single-handedly, brick by brick, undoing the power of the Senate to have oversight in one of the most legendary committees in history. And they are permanently impacting the ability of our democracy to function as our founding fathers intended. And it was a shocking display and it was so stupid and ugly and frankly embarrassing.

I am, I'm really surprised no one spoke up, not one of them.

Kendall Lanyon, you were monitoring this for us, I guess I would point out the mission was obviously to vamp for Fox News clips. She probably scored high marks for that endeavor. I'm sure she'll look great tonight. But Trump is sitting at a 37 percent approval rating, and one of the most unpopular things he's doing is weaponizing the Department of Justice. Seventy percent of Americans oppose sort of a vague question about weaponization.

And the number goes higher when you put in indicting Jim Comey, indicting these people. He doesn't even bring along all of the people who voted for him less than one year ago. What was this about, in your view?

It was about not answering questions, Nicol Nicole, first and foremost, because these were questions that were, that the answers to which I think really put the Trump administration in a very difficult position. Why did you fire the U.S. attorney who wouldn't bring the case? Did Tom Homan take the money? These are questions they don't want to answer.

And so the strategy was, as you said, to read from an oppo sheet and to attack each senator individually. And, you know, you could debate about whether the Democrats had a good strategy to rebut that. I personally don't think that they did, although some did better than others. But you're right.

Claire is absolutely right. We have never seen anything like this before. Christopher Wray used to go up there and get railed by the Republicans on the Hill. They would attack him left, right and center, making baseless allegations, and he would just sit there and take it, because that's what he thought was his role as FBI director, not to fight back, not to read from an op-o sheet, and no doubt he could have as the FBI director.

But one of the most striking things to me about today was that there were a lot of questions that she could hide behind. That's a pending investigation, or I don't talk about personnel matters. But one thing that, one place where that does not apply is the Tom Homan matter,

because that is a closed investigation. There's nothing pending about it. And so it's hard for me to imagine that she doesn't know the factual answer to the question of did he actually accept the money from an FBI undercover and what happened to that money. If she's seen the files, if she's talked to anybody who's reviewed that case, she knows

the answer to that question. And she refused to answer it today. And she has no really good reason to answer it and not to answer it rather and that is a fundamental question that I think we can all agree like the American public has a right to that information this person who's wielding enormous power in the government right now according to our sources and

according to a document we've seen accepted $50,000 from undercover FBI agents in a sting as part of a corruption investigation. The Justice Department dropped that investigation. They're telling us it was reviewed and there was no crime found, but they won't release any of the documents and they won't even tell us the basic facts. Did he keep the money?

If he did, did he pay taxes on it? So that to me was the most extraordinary moment of an extraordinary day.

I mean, Ken, two follow-up questions for you on that. I mean, I think they did more than what you just articulated. Today Fox News is reporting that the FBI fired and dismantled the entire corruption squad. It was ostensibly about phone records being swept up in the investigation of the insurrection on January 6th. But they don't just excuse their own.

They destroy the law enforcement capability that might damage their own. What did they say about that, if anything?

This was, Nicole, an insidious triumph of right-wing propaganda, because Chuck Grassley releases this redacted FBI document that shows that the FBI, as part of the Jack Smith investigation, obtained the tolling records, to and from records that are the property of the phone company and that are obtainable by a subpoena, not a warrant, not a court order, but a subpoena. The FBI obtained those in the course of the investigating the insurrection.

But Grassley puts that out, right-wing media explodes in rage and calls this spying on Republican senators. And by the time it gets to the hearing, when sort of mainstream reporters like me are just trying to figure out what is this all about and what's the context here, you have senators saying that they were wiretapped, which was just a fantasy. That's not what happened. What this was was Jack Smith trying to figure out who Donald Trump was calling when he was trying to delay the certification, this is according to my sources, of the 2020 election. He was talking to members of Congress.

And it wasn't just, he has multiple cell phones, he goes through intermediaries. And there was a reference to this in the Smith report. He talks about Trump calling members of Congress. And he also talks about consulting with public integrity about the proper way to investigate that and how to obtain documents.

So this is perfectly legitimate. These senators were not targeted, they were not under investigation, they were essentially witnesses in this investigation, but they've made it into this fake scandal and now it's having real world repercussions because as you said, Kash Patel just announced not long ago that he's firing FBI agents and disbanding a corruption squad. This is not the first corruption squad they disbanded by the way.

They had previously disbanded one in the Washington field office whose job was to investigate corruption in Congress, ironically enough. So yeah, you're absolutely right. These FBI agents are losing their jobs because they did what they were asked to do in a lawfully predicated investigation. And another corruption squad looking at public corruption doesn't exist.

And a lot of people think that right now no one in the FBI or the Justice Department is And a lot of people think that right now no one in the FBI or the Justice Department is examining public corruption unless it's something that Donald Trump wants them to look at.