OAN Commentary by: Mehek Cooke
Monday, January 27, 2025
Following a standout performance at her confirmation hearings, Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi appears poised for confirmation. Here’s a closer look at what Americans can expect from the country’s incoming top law enforcement official.
Restoring Trust
Bondi understands her foremost task as Attorney General will be restoring public trust in the Department of Justice. During the Senate confirmation hearings, she pointed out a stark reality: “72 percent of Americans have lost faith in the Department of Justice.”
And for good reason. Under the Biden administration, the DOJ engaged in egregious acts such as spying on pro-lifers, traditional Catholics, and concerned parents who spoke out at school board meetings to protect their children. It conducted a massive witch hunt in the aftermath of January 6, targeting peaceful protesters, lawyers like John Eastman—whose only “crime” was presenting a constitutionally grounded argument that Democrats opposed and even President Trump himself. In addition, it failed to prosecute domestic terrorists who firebombed pro-life pregnancy centers in the wake of the Dobbs decision.
Fortunately, Bondi also knows exactly how to restore that trust. She pledged to senators that her “overriding objective will be to return the DOJ to its core mission of keeping Americans safe and vigorously prosecuting criminals.”
Americans can expect a swift end to political persecutions and renewed focus on real crimes like human trafficking, gang activity, and the drug trade.
De-Politicizing the DOJ
Bondi also pledged that, under her leadership, the “partisanship” and “weaponization” at DOJ “will be gone.”
In addition to the headline-grabbing abuses chronicled in the previous section, the Biden DOJ perpetuated political agendas through countless smaller actions to conceal the Biden’s political failures.
When Biden’s reckless spending sent inflation through the roof, the DOJ sought out a few convenient scapegoats. Instead of acknowledging that Biden spent trillions of dollars on unnecessary COVID relief and green energy handouts, the DOJ shifted blame to greedy grocery chains, Visa’s large share of the debit card market, and landlords using pricing software to allegedly “price-gouge” renters.
None of these are actual problems. Grocery chains didn’t suddenly become greedy, there’s no shortage of ways to pay for goods, and rental pricing apps simply reflect market conditions. However, the DOJ has targeted all three, blaming them for making life unaffordable for Americans.
Bondi’s commitment to restoring the DOJ’s integrity means a return to antitrust enforcement that prioritizes consumer welfare rather than political damage control.
Keeping the Partisans Honest
And finally, we are reminded again that Democrats still only have one strategy when they’re losing: accuse the other side of sins they commit every day.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson aptly described this tactic in a 2023 speech. Most children, Carlson noted, would be ashamed if you caught them raiding the cookie jar and lying about it. However, a child working for the Biden administration “would stare right in your eyes and smile and say, I didn’t eat any Oreos. You did.”
That’s exactly what we saw at Bondi’s hearing. Democrat Senators Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) sat there, crumbs and white frosting all over their faces, and accused the AG-designate of gorging on milk’s favorite cookie.
We heard accusations that Bondi would prosecute anti-Trump politicians like Liz Cheney, as if Biden didn’t spend four years prosecuting Trump (and anyone who got in his way). We heard claims Bondi would facilitate Trump’s abuse of presidential pardon powers, as if Biden didn’t just pardon his own son and commute the sentence of a child raping serial killer. We heard that Trump would use the DOJ to act lawlessly, as if Biden hasn’t shown contempt for the law at every turn—pushing an obviously illegal student debt forgiveness scheme and even claiming the power to amend the Constitution by decree.
It’s past time for Republicans to stop taking this pearl-clutching seriously. Democrats are not voicing genuine concerns about our cherished norms. When they lack power, they clothe themselves with lofty principles. The moment they get it back, their Machiavellian nature becomes impossible to ignore.
Expect this same playbook to continue through the rest of the confirmation hearings, throughout Trump’s second term, and beyond.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
Cooke, an attorney and political strategist, is a surrogate for the Trump for President Campaign and the Republican National Convention.
