Bulwark Takes - Pam Bondi LOSES IT In Congressional Hearing

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Tim and JVL go through various moments from Pam Bondi's hearing in the Congressional Oversight Committee, in which she evades, lies, and covers for Donald Trump. 

Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine.

And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexsavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. I exams provided by independent optometrists. Hey everybody. It's Tim Miller from the Bullwork, here with my colleague, Jonathan V. Last. I don't do this enough. Subscribe to the feed.

Subscribe to the feed. The TPSA Losers got a million new subscriptions from their halftime show with the guys. Never nude. Never nude kick rock. I love to fish. I want to kiss my wife. It's so hard in this country to be country. It's like that's the best you guys got.

So anyway, they got a million subs off of that. So you subscribe to us. Help us compete. J.B. I want to talk to you about the Pam Bondi hearing on the hill. And I haven't got to see a lot of it because I've seen the clips. I was on a plane back from California. And I was expecting to watch it.

But some of the channels are airing some of it live. So I got to see it in bits. At one point about halfway through the flight, though, I did pop over to Fox. And I was like, wonder what they're doing with this. And Fox has turned into a true crime network now during the day. I don't know if you know that. It's just all. murders and the Nancy Guthrie

abduction is the appropriate story but like it's just this the testimony was barely existed it's like at the end of the half hour they got to it they did a little break and uh they were like ho ho ho pam bondi really got them pointing out the stock market is up uh does do people who don't like that not have a 401k so I don't know that it's breaking through as much as we wanted on Fox

I guess is my is my take but you know hopefully people can post this and their MAGA family members can see it Yeah, that's good family advice. Let's start with that stock market clip. I guess before we start with the stock market clip, do you have any thoughts that, any wrapping paper you want to put on the whole day? One thing. It is entirely new to have an attorney general treating Congress with contempt, open contempt. open contempt and also acting as if she works directly for the president.

This is, again, I feel silly even having to stipulate to this, but in the before times, the attorney general, and in fact, all cabinet members would go through the motions of, yes, sir, honorable gentleman or gentle lady, this is an interesting question. What I really want to talk about is blah, blah, blah. and they would go to Paines to underscore the fact to which they were independent of the president. And that's just gone. She acts like she's Stephen Miller. Yeah, I mean, worse.

Honestly, at times Carolyn Levitt. Yeah, well, Carolyn Levitt. Plausibly tries to answer the questions being asked. You know, Pam Bondi just had total, just dealt with the elected representatives of we the people. Yeah. With utter contempt, as if they had no bearing or as if they were just gnats flying around her head. And again, maybe people don't understand this, but this is brand new. It didn't used to be like this.

This is brand new. Though I'm kind of surprised they're showing up at all. What's your take on that? Why are they showing up at all? Well, I think on the Epstein thing, it's because to not show up with Epstein, bad optics. right now. You got to show up because you have to rep Trump on Epstein because he's at the

bottom of this is like, oh, got to make sure people don't think that he was you know, doing stuff. And so that's like, you know what. Yeah. Is that your read to or no? I think it's a little bit of hubris and also, yeah, a little bit of objects.

I don't know. But part of it is it just is like the one thing that it makes me think and you oftentimes point to the other side of this, where you're like, if Donald Trump was not planning on leaving, what would he be doing differently? You know? And I think here's one example. Like, if they were really planning on just becoming an autocracy, one thing they would be doing differently is saying pound sand Congress, we don't need to show up to your stupid kangaroo court. And they're not doing that. They're going.

I just think that's an interesting data point. Just want to ask, though, what do you think the odds are that they continue to show up in a Democratic-led house? Because I think they go to zero. Yeah, I was going to say below 50s. There we go. That's the difference between us. I'm always in the, you know, hedging. Let's move to the wonderful optics from her conversation about things are going great in your 401k. I don't know if you guys have noticed that. Fox was telling us about that today. Pam Bondi was asked about, you know, various Epstein items. Let's hear what her initial spin was. Have you apologized to President Trump? Have you apologized to President Trump? All of you who participated in those impeachment hearings against Donald Trump. You all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack the president and I am not going to have it. I'm not going to put up with it.

You know, all they want to do, all the American people need to know this. They are talking about Epstein today. This has been around since the Obama administration. This administration released over three million pages of documents, over three million, and Donald Trump signed that law to release all of those documents. He is the most transparent president in the nation's history. And none of them, none of them, ask Merrick Garland over the last four years one word about Jeffrey Epstein. How ironic is that? You know why? Because Donald Garland? Because Donald Trump, the Dow, the Dow right now is over, the Dow is over $50,000. I don't know why you're laughing.

You're a great stock trader, as I hear Raskin. The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000. I guess that kind of answers my rhetorical question, why show up to do a performance for the audience of one. Yeah. And I mean, it is. it's a lot like J.D. Vance in front of Zelensky. Like, you know, have you even said thank you once?

Have you even apologized? The weirdness of the parallel structures here shows that these people do understand what he wants to hear. Right. He wants to hear them berating the bad people for not doing whatever thing they would have, should have done in the president's fantasies. And so for Zelensky, it's like you should have been bowing and scraping and thank you, Thank you. And for them, it's, oh, Mr. President, we're so sorry.

We're so sorry over the impeachments. I think that she knows that Trump likes that and that the like team Jersey MAGA people will love that performance. Right. I mean, it's like it's breathless. It's ridiculous. It's not compelling. The problem for me is, though, in the Epstein situation is a little different, right? Because in theory, they would also like to be talking to Roganverse, right?

like podcast land, like other people who have been interested in Epstein, who are not necessary team jersey Republicans, Sean Hannity viewers. Like that's going to do nicely on Sean Hannity. I feel like that doesn't play at all with like regular bros who are like, wait a minute. I just, I just want to know who the kid fuckers are.

Okay. Great. Thanks. Congrats on the NASDAQ. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, on the other hand,

she also doesn't seem to have control of her faculties, really. She's a little. Well, again, the idea that. that your attorney general is somebody who stands there shouting at all caps. Yeah. Is there are positions in the executive branch where it is okay to have somebody like that traditionally

that has not been the nation's top law enforcement officer. Just, just saying. But I think they've probably made peace of the fact that they're going to lose whoever they're going to lose in Bro World over Epstein. And what is really important to them, because they can survive losing those people. Yeah. They can't survive losing the. Team R jerseys.

Yeah. And so that's why they've got to lock those people down. Because if you start having erosion on them, we saw this in the UGuff poll yesterday. Yeah. You know, he's down to like 82% approved from Republicans, which sounds like way more than it should, but is actually for him quite low. Normally he's in low 90s, high, high 80s. Well, as these things go, as these hearings go, as, you know, folks who are watches of them,

they go back and forth with the questioning. So you have a questioning from the Democratic side and then the Republican side. the question for the Republican side was overwhelmingly like, oh, Attorney General Bondi, we tell us how great of a job you guys have been doing going after the woke left. But there was one exception to that, Thomas Massey of Kentucky, maybe providing a reason to answer to your question from TNL yesterday, JVL, why stay as a Republican? He gets to answer. He gets to ask these questions from the Republican side of the table.

Fair enough. And Thomas Massey, given her the business a little bit. Let's watch. Who's responsible? Are you able to track who in your organization made this massive failure and released the victim's names? Are you able to track who it was that obscured Les Wexner's name as a co-conspirator in an FBI document? Do you have that kind of accountability? I believe Wexner's name was listed more than 4,000 times about I had...

Yeah, I already told you that. This is where he's listed as a co-conspirator. Can I finish my answer? Come on, let me finish my answer. We corrected that within 40 minutes. He was already, you're acting like everybody was trying to cover up Wexner's name. Reclaiming my time. I'm going to answer this question.

Reclaiming my time. He was, Mr. Chairman. This isn't how this works. Can I have my time? He was, he was. Mr. Chairman. The gentlelady can give her answer? The time belongs to the gentleman from Kentucky.

All right, I'm reclaiming my time. Can I give my answer? So, I'm going to put the language of the bill up on the screen. Chairman, may I give my answer on that? Here's a political joke, and I need to give my answer on that. We'll let the Attorney General respond, and then the gentleman can move to his next question. Within 40 minutes, you asked me a question. Within 40 minutes, Wexner's name was added back.

Within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed. Red-hand, there was one redaction out of over 40, 7-100. And we invited you in. This guy has Trump D'Arangement Syndrome. He has Trump D'Arangement Syndrome. Thomas Massey, Republican congressman from Kentucky, failed politician. I think one more election to Pam Bondi has, but what did you make of their exchange? I mean, I would say the dishonesty is breathtaking, but of course it's not because, I mean, he's asking a very, a very reasonable question, which is in this incredibly crucial place where there are documents in which the Wexner's name is listed as a co-conspirator, that got redacted.

in flagrant violation of black letter law. Can you tell us who did that? And that's not even asking like, who did that? It's like, do you have, how does your system of redaction work? Do you, do you have a setup in which every redaction is attached through metadata to the person, the user who logged in who was carrying that out? Which is a totally reasonable question, actually. And kind of an interesting question, right?

You assume all this is being done electronically. It's not like people are sitting there with black sharpies. is everybody who's doing this logged in so that all all edits are are trackable to the person who did them and she just refuses to engage on I mean it's just unresponsive and that's one of the things we see over and over is unresponsive even to questions which are like this is a heart this is a technical question about how the redaction process is being carried out by the Justice Department and she refuses to be transparent about that. Yeah, and like as in the layer of like this is about a, like this question is really about incompetence more than cover up.

Yeah. Right. It wasn't even political accusation. It's like, are you guys, do you guys know what you're doing? I mean, you left unredacted the victim's names and you redacted the perp's name. Right. Like that's the opposite of what you should have done. How'd that happen?

Are you going to fix it? And, you know, I mean, who the hell knows? I mean, they probably have Grock doing the redactions, you know, at some level. And I think there is a cover up element to this, but there is also an incompetence level. And we, we shut down. a balloon on the border. Yeah. Well, that's what it really is, right?

It's a, how are you guys doing this thing, which you are mandated by law to do? And the answer is, I guess we're just all in the honor system. Right. The law says the Department of Justice has to do this. Department of Justice puts out a work product. And the work product sucks and doesn't comply with the law. And when Congress goes to exert some oversight and say, and wait a minute, hold on, how are you doing this thing? The Department of Justice just says, fuck you.

Right. I mean, okay. It's our law. We pass the law. I want to get back to a couple of I've seen things, but first there was one other topic, or there are several other topics that got brought up, but one that I think is worth highlighting.

Joe Noguse, a rep from Colorado, a fellow Nuggets fan. I'm a big Naguice man. He wanted to bring up the case of one of the pardoned J-Sixers who now apparently works for us, the public servant,

working in the Justice Department. Let's take a look at that exchange. Hey, you guys are disgusting. I'm from a law enforcement. You're disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are going to stop them. You can't see it because you're chasing the pension, right?

Pynching. You're retired. Right? That's what runs your life. The sad thing is they're not even going to get their pension because it's going to be hard. It's shame on you. Seems like a level-headed gentleman.

Yeah. Somebody do you want on a pitch of that? of authority for the government. Just to exercise in his first man right to free speech. That man works for you now, right? Who was that, Congressman? The man in that video, the one who was in the police-worn body cam footage,

the one allegedly yelling kill him at police officers on January 6th. His name is Jared Wise. He does work for us. He works for you at the Department of Justice. He does. This is an individual... Meritocracy. From a federal grand jury indicted.

for two felonies and four misdemeanors related to his participation in the attack on January 6th. One of those charges was forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating, and interfering with police with the intent to commit another felony. This is who you choose as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America to hire the Department of Justice, someone on video yelling kill him at police officers, right? I believe he was pardoned by President Trump. Oh, he was pardoned.

You're right. You're right. Pardoned by President Trump. That means it didn't happen. You know, it's like deleting a tweet, Tim, right? When you delete the truth social post with the Obama's as apes, it didn't happen. And when you get pardoned, it means, you know, saying that you kill them to a bunch of cops. That didn't happen either.

Yeah, I don't know. Back to blue, Tim. I want people to be able to have a second chance in life. I don't think he should have got a pardoned. I think that somebody that did attack the Capitol that ended up serving time, getting out of jail because they were pardoned corruptly by the president, should have a chance to, like, manage a McDonald's or something. I don't know.

Maybe work the cashier's desk there at the McDonald's. I think there are other potential jobs that might be appropriate for him. The Justice Department seems like a strange. choice. Even if he was pardoned, he was there saying, kill the cops. But those are the bad cops, Tim. Those are the bad cops. You got to keep it straight, right? There's the good

cops, then there's the bad cops, and these are the bad cops. So we're just learning more and more. So if you're wondering, how do you think that they fucked up the redaction so bad that they redacted the names of the perpetrators, the co-conspirators, the pedos with Epstein, but they left unredacted the victim's names. How could they've done that? how could they have at the border shot down a balloon when they thought it was a drone

and closed down to a whole major city's airport for a while because they were confused by a balloon? The answer does seem to be maybe the Jared Wises of the world are at the help. They're not sending us their best, Tim. I don't think they are. Up next, things really escalated when Ted Love, California,

started questioning Pam Bondi. I think that he paints her into a corner on whether she's sharing the truth in her testimony. she isn't happy about it and then he shares like some really jarring testimony that's in the files implicating potentially Donald Trump so let's take a look at that like former prince Andrew Donald Trump attended various parties with Jeffrey Epstein I want to know whether any underage girls at that party or at any party that Trump attended with Jeffrey

Epstein. This is so ridiculous and that they are trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done. There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. Everyone knows that. This has been the most transparent presidency. He's the one that asked that those files be released. I got your answer. You said there's no evidence. Mr. Chairman, please stop the clock. This is time. This is time belongs to the gentleman. I belong to the gentleman. from California. Okay. I'm going to put up another document from a witness who called the FBI's National Threat Operation Center because I believe you just lied under oath. There is ample evidence in the Epstein Fife. Don't you ever accuse me of a crime? I believe you just lie under oath

and this is all in videotape. You said there's no evidence of crime. I'm showing you here is a witness statement who called into the FBI's threat operation center. He drove Donald Trump around in a limo. He overheard what Donald Trump said to Jeffrey on his cell phone. He was so angry. He was going to stop a limo and hurt Donald Trump. And he met a girl who said she was raped by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. She later had her head blown off and officers at the scene said that could not have been suicide. No one, no one at the Department of Justice interviewed this witness. You need to interview this witness immediately. Epstein should rot in hell

so sure the men who patronizes operation and as we say here today there are over 1,000 sex trafficking victims and you have not held a single man accountable shame on you

if you had any decency you would resign right after this hearing concludes all right JVL so just let's do the first part of this first like I did enjoy just the I just believe you just lied under oath I like that bluntness

a lot of times the Democrats and journalists are hesitant to just be blunt. And Ted Liu, there isn't. And he's just like, look, you said there's no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. I believe that's a lie. There is evidence that he committed a crime.

Before we get into the specific one that Lou brought up, I mean, Trump admitted to crimes related to women before. And he was caught on tape saying that women let you do whatever you want. And he has, there have been many, many credible accusations of sexual assault that he's committed, not in court with underage. What's that? And he's been convicted of crimes. So, you know, anyway, like just on that point, she gets back into a corner and, I mean, loses are cool.

Her cortisol spikes. What I found interesting of that was that she objected to being told that she's lying under oath. Because lying under oath is a thing that many of the Trump appointees have done at this point, right? and they have never seemed particularly bothered by that, right? They, the result seems the general affect seems to be. Yeah. So I lied in truth. What are you going to do about it?

And she takes the out. She does this sort of feel like, how dare you, sir? And I found that a little weird and interesting. And this is a thing where I do, like, you know, as you said earlier, going forward, how serious are they about trying to hang on and start playing by extra legal means, which we're going to see, I think, probably a lot of as this year progresses, especially as we get closer to the election. And, you know, at some point, do they really stop, like does everybody stop caring that it looks like they're lying to Congress or committing

perjuries or, I mean, there's a thing that I noticed on the White House website. this week where I went to the White House website and I got a pop up that was like, you know, give us your email here so that we can keep you up to date with all the latest news, et cetera, et cetera. And I thought, I mean,

it's possible that this is gathering emails for like White House comms purposes. But it seems also possible that this is gathering emails for like Republican fundraising, which would be, if true, a very serious violation. But like, like all the hatch act stuff, right?

They've just stopped pretending to care about the hatch act stuff. Maybe it's like that too. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, at this point, you know, she's just losing her temper also. And I don't know. Maybe things like throwing a fastball back at them. The fact that Lou brought up that, that accusation or the testimony from the limousine

driver, I thought was also interesting. This is just such another difference from what any other Justice Department would do in a situation right like this, right? Because like, in a situation like that, I don't, you know, the FBI. I get Donald's been a famous person. Like the FBI gets bunk reports all the time from people who are either crazy people or people who are trying to cause trouble or whatever. So like, is that that?

Is that real? Is that legit? That is like what the job of this really should have been. Right? Like that there are career prosecutors who are taking this stuff seriously, going back through everything, putting them out in a package saying, hey, here are credible accusations. Here are some things that were included that we're going to share for grandparents. but like in the past some u.s. attorney looked into it and they saw that it was you know that the person was fabricating that whatever like they didn't do that they just dumped everything out there and so when you do that and when the president of the united states is a serial perv and sexual assault artist you're going to get into these situations where like i and that is obviously a very alarming report that congress and lou um laid out and like

Our government cannot credibly interpret that for any of us. And they don't seem to obviously have any interest in investigating it. And that's the thing, right? And there's zero percent chance that anybody ever goes and investigates this. Because that's not what our Justice Department does anymore. I want to fast forward towards the end of this here and go to Jerry Nadler, who's going to be replaced by... He's in the bulwark primary. George is in there, a bunch of a couple of guys, the Kennedy kids.

Everybody wants Jerry Nadler's seat. You can see why. You can see a senior member of the committee. Ask her about what I think is, again, the core question about all of this. Like, there's a lot of, you know, sub-stories and side stories and conspiracies and there's political implications. Like, the real story is, who are the other co-conspirators? Is there going to be justice for the victims? Right.

Like, that's, like, that's the serious part about this that isn't really political at all. It's only political in the sense that, like, maybe some of the co-conspirators are in the inner circle of this white house. But, like, but, you know, that is what is the real thing that we need to discover here. And Nadler goes to Bondi on that point. Let's watch that. Have just, so I really have just one question for you. How many of Epstein's co-conspirators have you indicted? How many perpetrators are you even investigating?

First, you showed it. I find it. How many have you indicted? Excuse me. I'm going to answer the question. I answer my question. No, I'm going to answer the question the way. I want to answer the question.

Your theatrics are ridiculous. Chairman Jordan, I'm not going to get in the gutter with these people, but I'm going to answer the question. How many of you? How many of you? Again, the time belongs. Reclaiming my time. The time belongs. I think it's very interesting.

I think it's very interesting that he talks about they indicted. The president said they indicted him twice. Mr. Chairman, please, we'll stop the clock and restore his time. Oh, okay. Here we go with these theatrics. The time belongs to the gentleman from New York. We will give you a few more seconds. We will do that.

But when you ask a question, the witness gets the answer. You may not like the answer, but she gets to answer. They don't like the answer, Chairman. They don't like the answer, Chairman, because it's honest. So he asked a four-minute question. Restore 45 seconds to Mr. Navajo, please, Mr. Chairman. Answer. You can let her filibuster all.

all day long, but not on our watch. Not on our time. No way. And I told you about that, Attorney General, before you started. You don't tell me. Yeah, I did tell you because we saw what you did in the Senate. Not even a lawyer. Middy will be in order. So there you have it, JVL.

I, like, that's the key. And if you took any of these fucking Maga Chuds at their word, that's the thing that they cared about. That's what Cash said back in the day, which is that like, if there is anybody who else was involved in the pedophilia ring, we will come for you. We will put you behind bars.

It's what the FBI, FBI director said. And here we have Nadler asking about that specific question, like a very relevant, substantive question, who were the other perpetrators? Who were the other child rapists? And Pam Bondi, again, resorts to theatrics and like insults and doing like Donald Trump insult comedy, but without the charm. This will tell us a lot about the American voters, right? Because you saw this show up on survey after survey over the last four years where Republican voters were really deeply concerned about all this stuff.

And we even got an entire universe conspiracy theory which developed around this. And now it turns out that I am not here to say that QAnon had it right. That is not true. That is not the case. But it is the case that there was a cabal of a ring of pedophiles at the very highest elite levels. and that it, they didn't wear babies faces and do frazzle drip, but, you know, there was, there was a bunch of crime going on and it was all being covered up and there's all sorts of mysterious deaths associated with it.

And now a lot of those people just simply don't care. And more to the point, they even pretend that they're going to care about it like to go after Democrats. I don't know if you remember this, but we had a moment immediately after the law. was signed about mandating the release where the Justice Department was like oh there's a bunch of stuff we can't put out because it has a bunch of Democrats in it

yeah and the response by I think people like us was great you're going to prosecute those people right yeah great do it and and but they're not doing that either yeah right and then the reason they're not doing is because I don't think there are any people like that Donald Trump used to be a Democrat so you know there's fair but you see what I'm saying like it

It is a whole dissentress. They're not even trying to swap in for a new, you know, here's the real bad guy in this. They just want to shut the whole thing down. And I am interested to see if Republican voters tolerate that. What do you think they'll do, Tim? I think that a lot of them will tolerate it. But I also think that they're in for some heat because this is not, this is not, there is also a conspiracy, a kind of a conservative coded conspiracy.

industrial media complex. They already don't like, I mean, even all the up through into like Megan Kelly, like they don't like Van Bondi that much. And they're not that impressed with Bondi and Patel. And I mean, imagine if you're, there's also kind of the MAGA conspiracy world where they're upset that nobody's been arrested

for the 2020 election crime. They're like, what are these guys doing? They haven't done anything. So I think that, like, what hurt Trump? You've walked me to where you wanted me to go, which is I think Republican voters will give them a pass. Bondi, though, is in some hot water. And I think when your cortisol is spiking like that,

and Jerry Nadler is frame-mogging you, you know, that's not good. That's bad. I would remind people that Pam Bondi was the grown-up pick who reassured everyone that Donald Trump wasn't going to be that bad. Do you remember the sigh of relief from the Wall Street Journal editorial board when, oh, thank goodness. is Pam Bondi.

Well, she's a grown-up. They really should have left to be Gates. I mean, if somebody was going to just lie to the Congress about the cover-up of sex with underage women, why not just have it be Matt Gates? You know, if someone's going to put on a show and start your theatrics are ridiculous, let the big forehead guy do it. He would have been better. Okay, JVL, I got to run.

I appreciate it. everybody as mentioned the time subscribe to the feed we got a lot more coming this week so we'll see you all soon