Politics

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Department to target his political opponents and lawmakers’ increasing calls for the release of more files from federal investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein took center stage at a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday for Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is the first time since July that Bondi has faced questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer for the department that included deployments of federal law enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a growing number of investigations announced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

Democratic, Republican leaders differ on hearing focus

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley kicked off the hearing with extensive remarks seeking to highlight instances of what Republicans have labeled “weaponization” of the Justice Department under the Biden Administration, citing selective disclosures by FBI Director Kash Patel of the investigation into President Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.

“These are indefensible acts,” Grassley said. “This was a political phishing expedition to get Trump at all costs.”

Specifically, Grassley singled out a timely disclosure by the FBI on Monday that showed former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigators at one point sought limited phone toll records of several Republican senators around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

As part of his investigation, Smith extensively investigated Trump and his allies’ pressure campaign on lawmakers to block the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win — including calls that were made to senators after the Capitol was breached by the pro-Trump mob.

There’s no indication that Republican senators were a target of Smith’s investigation, and the toll records sought by investigators would not include any information about the content of conversations they may have had.

“We’re pointing this all out because we can’t have this repeated in the United States,” Grassley said. “We want to end it right now, whether we have Republican or Democrat administrations.”

Grassley made no mention of recent directives from Trump to have the Justice Department act “now” to carry out prosecutions of his political foes, or other instances of alleged politicization during Bondi’s tenure that have led to scores of departures of longtime career officials who have sounded alarm about the department being used as a tool to enact political retribution.

Ranking Democratic member Dick Durbin said in his opening statement assailed the Trump administration for the conduct in Chicago, a city in which Durbin represents.

“As President Trump turns the full force of the federal government on Chicago and other American cities, the assault on the city I am proud to represent is just one example of how President Trump and Attorney General Bondi shut down justice at the Department of Justice, even before the president’s party controlling the white House, Senate and House of Representatives shut down the government,” Durbin said.

“The attorney general has systematically weaponized our nation’s leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies and attack his opponents. And sadly, the American people. You have purged hundreds of senior career officials since you first appeared before us,” he added.

Durbin listed off the greatest hits for critics of Bondi’s Justice Department, the closed investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, the Eric Adams case being dropped, the hiring of a Jan. 6 defendant who attacked MPD officers, the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and the case against James Comey.

“What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. This is your legacy,” Durbin said.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, also pressed Bondi on Tuesday over whether Bondi personally approved closing the investigation into Trump’s border czar Tom Homan.

“Miss Bondi, did you approve closing the Homan investigation? Bribery investigation?” Hirono said.

“Senator Hirono, as I stated earlier, the Department of Justice and the FBI conducted a thorough review, and they found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing,” Bondi responded.

Hirono then pressed Bondi over the department’s removal of dozens of prosecutors who worked on investigations involving President Trump and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Bondi shot back, “I’m not going to discuss personnel matters with you.”

Hirono concluded her questioning by accusing Bondi of deliberately politicizing the department, turning it from the Department of Justice into the “Department of revenge and corruption.”

Bondi pushes back against Democrats

Bondi pushed back against her critics and Democrats during the hearing. In her opening statement, she framed her tenure as the “end” of weaponization of law enforcement, while reinforcing her extensive efforts to enact President Trump’s agenda.

“We will work to earn that back every single day. We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime. While there is more work to do, I believe in eight short months we have made tremendous progress towards those ends,” she said.

She also railed against judges who have ruled against the administration in the months since Trump took office, while highlighting the Justice Department’s string of victories at the Supreme Court.

“My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump’s agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach,” she said.

Bondi continued to hit back at Durbin, who questioned her about the federal deployment to Illinois.

The attorney general taunted the senator about Chicago’s crime rate. Bondi said that Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were on their way to the city.

“Chairman, as you shut down the government, you voted to shut down the government and you’re sitting here as law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you. I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she said.

Durbin was taken aback by Bondi’s responses.

“Madam attorney general, it’s my job to grill you. Investigation of your agency is part of my responsibility. And this – this committee, you mean. I’d like the experience, but others have weathered the storm and answered questions in a respectful manner,” he said.

Bondi in the hot seat over Epstein files

Bondi faced heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein files, after the Justice Department and FBI said in a July letter that no further releases were warranted and that there was no evidence suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor girls.

Democrats have accused the administration of seeking to cover up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had past associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.

Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, were friends in the 1990s but the president said the relationship soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump’s Florida club after he explicitly warned him not to do so.

When asked on Fox News about the alleged Epstein client list, the attorney general told Fox News in February, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

She refused to elaborate about those past comments or the growing calls for the Epstein files while testifying.

Bondi responded to individual Democrats who sought more details by surfacing donations they allegedly may have received from Reid Hoffman — an entrepreneur and founder of LinkedIn who is known to have past associations with Epstein.

She again surfaced Hoffman’s alleged donations in an exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, in which she again refused to answer his direct questions about the Epstein files.

Political targeting questioned

Trump has recently ordered the department to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and other senior White House officials have alleged, without providing evidence, as helping to fund perpetrators who have attacked federal law enforcement officials dispatched around the country.

Just days after Trump’s comments, a senior official in the Justice Department ordered several U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country to prepare to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations founded by billionaire George Soros, naming criminal statutes ranging from robbery, material support for terrorism and racketeering, ABC News previously confirmed.

In a statement, the Open Society Foundations called the accusations “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”

Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their states and districts that were among the briefing materials she brought with her to the hearings.

She has also dismissed any characterization of the Justice Department appearing to work in lockstep with the White House as “politicization” of law enforcement. Bondi and other senior DOJ officials have instead argued that the two federal cases brought against Trump by a special counsel under the Biden Administration represented a far more egregious example of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled at the department by Trump.

DOJ under scrutiny amid growing controversies

As ABC News first reported, the move to seek Comey’s indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors and followed Trump’s removal of his appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.

Trump eventually installed a White House aide and former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan to lead the office and move forward with the case against Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — while declining to indict on a third false statements charge. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is set to appear Thursday in federal court for his arraignment.

While sources told ABC News that leadership at the DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer news of Comey’s indictment in news interviews and social media posts.

The next week, the administration moved to fire a top national security prosecutor in the office, Michael Ben’Ary, over a misleading social media post that falsely suggested he was among the prosecutors who resisted charging Comey.

Ben’Ary was leading a major case against one of the alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Department’s leadership and labeled his removal as just one in a series of recent moves taken to root out career officials for political reasons at the expense of the nation’s security.

“This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”

The DOJ declined to comment when asked about Ben’Ary’s letter.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal pressed Bondi repeatedly on Tuesday over instances of pressure on the department by Trump and what conversations she may have had with him in the days leading up to the indictment of Comey.

“I’d like to know from you what conversations you had with President Trump about the indictment of James Comey,” Blumenthal said.

“Senator, I am not going to discuss any conversations I have or have not had with the President of the United States. You’re an attorney, you have a law degree, and you know that I’m not going to do that,” Bondi said on Tuesday.

Those actions have caused unprecedented turmoil at the Eastern District, which oversees some of the nation’s most sensitive national security, terrorism and espionage investigations.

Current and former officials say that turmoil has reverberated further across the Justice Department’s workforce around the country, with attorneys concerned they’ll face professional repercussions if they resist taking part in politicized investigations or prosecutions.

On Monday, nearly 300 DOJ employees who left the department since Trump’s inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi’s hearing describing her leadership as “appalling” in its treatment of the career workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White House.

“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously,” the former employees said. “Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we call on all Americans — whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ — to speak out against its destruction.”

The DOJ declined to comment on the letter.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Department to target his political opponents and lawmakers’ increasing calls for the release of more files from federal investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein took center stage at a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday for Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is the first time since July that Bondi has faced questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer for the department that included deployments of federal law enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a growing number of investigations announced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

Democratic, Republican leaders differ on hearing focus

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley kicked off the hearing with extensive remarks seeking to highlight instances of what Republicans have labeled “weaponization” of the Justice Department under the Biden Administration, citing selective disclosures by FBI Director Kash Patel of the investigation into President Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.

“These are indefensible acts,” Grassley said. “This was a political phishing expedition to get Trump at all costs.”

Specifically, Grassley singled out a timely disclosure by the FBI on Monday that showed former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigators at one point sought limited phone toll records of several Republican senators around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

As part of his investigation, Smith extensively investigated Trump and his allies’ pressure campaign on lawmakers to block the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win — including calls that were made to senators after the Capitol was breached by the pro-Trump mob.

There’s no indication that Republican senators were a target of Smith’s investigation, and the toll records sought by investigators would not include any information about the content of conversations they may have had.

“We’re pointing this all out because we can’t have this repeated in the United States,” Grassley said. “We want to end it right now, whether we have Republican or Democrat administrations.”

Grassley made no mention of recent directives from Trump to have the Justice Department act “now” to carry out prosecutions of his political foes, or other instances of alleged politicization during Bondi’s tenure that have led to scores of departures of longtime career officials who have sounded alarm about the department being used as a tool to enact political retribution.

Ranking Democratic member Dick Durbin said in his opening statement assailed the Trump administration for the conduct in Chicago, a city in which Durbin represents.

“As President Trump turns the full force of the federal government on Chicago and other American cities, the assault on the city I am proud to represent is just one example of how President Trump and Attorney General Bondi shut down justice at the Department of Justice, even before the president’s party controlling the white House, Senate and House of Representatives shut down the government,” Durbin said.

“The attorney general has systematically weaponized our nation’s leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies and attack his opponents. And sadly, the American people. You have purged hundreds of senior career officials since you first appeared before us,” he added.

Durbin listed off the greatest hits for critics of Bondi’s Justice Department, the closed investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, the Eric Adams case being dropped, the hiring of a Jan. 6 defendant who attacked MPD officers, the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and the case against James Comey.

“What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. This is your legacy,” Durbin said.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, also pressed Bondi on Tuesday over whether Bondi personally approved closing the investigation into Trump’s border czar Tom Homan.

“Miss Bondi, did you approve closing the Homan investigation? Bribery investigation?” Hirono said.

“Senator Hirono, as I stated earlier, the Department of Justice and the FBI conducted a thorough review, and they found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing,” Bondi responded.

Hirono then pressed Bondi over the department’s removal of dozens of prosecutors who worked on investigations involving President Trump and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Bondi shot back, “I’m not going to discuss personnel matters with you.”

Hirono concluded her questioning by accusing Bondi of deliberately politicizing the department, turning it from the Department of Justice into the “Department of revenge and corruption.”

Bondi pushes back against Democrats

Bondi pushed back against her critics and Democrats during the hearing. In her opening statement, she framed her tenure as the “end” of weaponization of law enforcement, while reinforcing her extensive efforts to enact President Trump’s agenda.

“We will work to earn that back every single day. We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime. While there is more work to do, I believe in eight short months we have made tremendous progress towards those ends,” she said.

She also railed against judges who have ruled against the administration in the months since Trump took office, while highlighting the Justice Department’s string of victories at the Supreme Court.

“My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump’s agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach,” she said.

Bondi continued to hit back at Durbin, who questioned her about the federal deployment to Illinois.

The attorney general taunted the senator about Chicago’s crime rate. Bondi said that Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were on their way to the city.

“Chairman, as you shut down the government, you voted to shut down the government and you’re sitting here as law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you. I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she said.

Durbin was taken aback by Bondi’s responses.

“Madam attorney general, it’s my job to grill you. Investigation of your agency is part of my responsibility. And this – this committee, you mean. I’d like the experience, but others have weathered the storm and answered questions in a respectful manner,” he said.

Bondi in the hot seat over Epstein files

Bondi faced heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein files, after the Justice Department and FBI said in a July letter that no further releases were warranted and that there was no evidence suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor girls.

Democrats have accused the administration of seeking to cover up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had past associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.

Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, were friends in the 1990s but the president said the relationship soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump’s Florida club after he explicitly warned him not to do so.

When asked on Fox News about the alleged Epstein client list, the attorney general told Fox News in February, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

She refused to elaborate about those past comments or the growing calls for the Epstein files while testifying.

Bondi responded to individual Democrats who sought more details by surfacing donations they allegedly may have received from Reid Hoffman — an entrepreneur and founder of LinkedIn who is known to have past associations with Epstein.

She again surfaced Hoffman’s alleged donations in an exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, in which she again refused to answer his direct questions about the Epstein files.

Political targeting questioned

Trump has recently ordered the department to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and other senior White House officials have alleged, without providing evidence, as helping to fund perpetrators who have attacked federal law enforcement officials dispatched around the country.

Just days after Trump’s comments, a senior official in the Justice Department ordered several U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country to prepare to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations founded by billionaire George Soros, naming criminal statutes ranging from robbery, material support for terrorism and racketeering, ABC News previously confirmed.

In a statement, the Open Society Foundations called the accusations “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”

Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their states and districts that were among the briefing materials she brought with her to the hearings.

She has also dismissed any characterization of the Justice Department appearing to work in lockstep with the White House as “politicization” of law enforcement. Bondi and other senior DOJ officials have instead argued that the two federal cases brought against Trump by a special counsel under the Biden Administration represented a far more egregious example of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled at the department by Trump.

DOJ under scrutiny amid growing controversies

As ABC News first reported, the move to seek Comey’s indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors and followed Trump’s removal of his appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.

Trump eventually installed a White House aide and former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan to lead the office and move forward with the case against Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — while declining to indict on a third false statements charge. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is set to appear Thursday in federal court for his arraignment.

While sources told ABC News that leadership at the DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer news of Comey’s indictment in news interviews and social media posts.

The next week, the administration moved to fire a top national security prosecutor in the office, Michael Ben’Ary, over a misleading social media post that falsely suggested he was among the prosecutors who resisted charging Comey.

Ben’Ary was leading a major case against one of the alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Department’s leadership and labeled his removal as just one in a series of recent moves taken to root out career officials for political reasons at the expense of the nation’s security.

“This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”

The DOJ declined to comment when asked about Ben’Ary’s letter.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal pressed Bondi repeatedly on Tuesday over instances of pressure on the department by Trump and what conversations she may have had with him in the days leading up to the indictment of Comey.

“I’d like to know from you what conversations you had with President Trump about the indictment of James Comey,” Blumenthal said.

“Senator, I am not going to discuss any conversations I have or have not had with the President of the United States. You’re an attorney, you have a law degree, and you know that I’m not going to do that,” Bondi said on Tuesday.

Those actions have caused unprecedented turmoil at the Eastern District, which oversees some of the nation’s most sensitive national security, terrorism and espionage investigations.

Current and former officials say that turmoil has reverberated further across the Justice Department’s workforce around the country, with attorneys concerned they’ll face professional repercussions if they resist taking part in politicized investigations or prosecutions.

On Monday, nearly 300 DOJ employees who left the department since Trump’s inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi’s hearing describing her leadership as “appalling” in its treatment of the career workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White House.

“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously,” the former employees said. “Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we call on all Americans — whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ — to speak out against its destruction.”

The DOJ declined to comment on the letter.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are scheduled to meet at the White House on Tuesday amid the trade war between the neighboring nations.

In July, Trump issued a 35% tariff on most goods and raw materials from Canada.

Canada originally issued retaliatory tariffs. However, in August, Carney announced exemptions for goods covered under the United States-Mexico-Canada trade pact.

During their last meeting in May, Carney pushed back against Trump’s controversial proposal to make Canada the 51st state.

“As you know from real estate, there are some places that are not for sale. And Canada is not for sale, it will never be for sale,” Carney told Trump. 

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Department to target his political opponents and lawmakers’ increasing calls for the release of more files from federal investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are likely to take center stage at a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday for Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is the first time since July that Bondi has faced questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer for the department that included deployments of federal law enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a growing number of investigations announced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. 

As ABC News first reported, the move to seek Comey’s indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors and followed Trump’s removal of his appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.

Trump eventually installed a White House aide and former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan to lead the office and move forward with the case against Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — while declining to indict on a third false statements charge. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is set to appear Thursday in federal court for his arraignment.

While sources told ABC News that leadership at DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer news of Comey’s indictment in news interviews and social media posts. 

The next week, the administration moved to fire a top national security prosecutor in the office, Michael Ben’Ary, over a misleading social media post that falsely suggested he was among the prosecutors who resisted charging Comey. 

Ben’Ary was leading a major case against one of the alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Department’s leadership and labeled his removal as just one in a series of recent moves taken to root out career officials for political reasons at the expense of the nation’s security. 

“This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”

The DOJ declined to comment when asked about Ben’Ary’s letter.

Those actions have caused unprecedented turmoil at the Eastern District, which oversees some of the nation’s most sensitive national security, terrorism and espionage investigations.

Current and former officials say that turmoil has reverberated further across the Justice Department’s workforce around the country, with attorneys concerned they’ll face professional repercussions if they resist taking part in politicized investigations or prosecutions.

On Monday, nearly 300 DOJ employees who left the department since Trump’s inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi’s hearing describing her leadership as “appalling” in its treatment of the career workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White House. 

“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously,” the former employees said. “Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we call on all Americans — whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ — to speak out against its destruction.”

The DOJ declined to comment on the letter.

Bondi will likely also face heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein files, after the Justice Department and FBI said in a July letter that no further releases were warranted and that there was no evidence suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor girls. 

Democrats have accused the administration of seeking to cover up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had past associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied. 

Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, were friends in the 1990s but the president said the relationship soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump’s Florida club after he explicitly warned him not to do so.

An effort underway in the House of Representatives to hold a vote on a measure that would demand the administration release the entirety of the files has been put on hold after Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home amid the ongoing government shutdown. 

The recent rise in acts of political violence will also likely be a central focus of questions to Bondi. Trump has recently ordered the department to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and other senior White House officials have alleged, without providing evidence, as helping to fund perpetrators who have attacked federal law enforcement officials dispatched around the country. 

Just days after Trump’s comments, a senior official in the Justice Department ordered several U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country to prepare to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations founded by billionaire George Soros, naming criminal statutes ranging from robbery, material support for terrorism and racketeering, ABC News previously confirmed.

In a statement, the Open Society Foundations called the accusations “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”

In her most recent appearances before the House and Senate in late June, Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their states and districts that were among briefing materials she brought with her to the hearings. 

She has also dismissed any characterization of the Justice Department appearing to work in lockstep with the White House as “politicization” of law enforcement. Bondi and other senior DOJ officials have instead argued that the two federal cases brought against Trump by a special counsel under the Biden Administration represented a far more egregious example of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled at the department by Trump. 

“Whether you’re a former FBI director, whether you’re a former head of an intel community, whether you are current state and local elected official, whether you are a billionaire funding organizations to try to keep Donald Trump out of office — everything is on the table,” Bondi said in a Fox News appearance last month. “We will investigate and will end the weaponization — no longer will there be a two-tier system of justice.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — One of the most well-known names in science, Bill Nye, the “Science Guy,” is pushing back on the Trump administration’s proposed NASA budget cuts.

NYE, the CEO of the Planetary Society, a nonprofit founded by Carl Sagan in 1980, joined colleagues, space advocates and legislators on Capitol Hill Monday to make a case for keeping NASA’s funding intact and the benefits of space exploration.

The Trump administration has proposed cutting NASA’s budget by approximately 24% for the 2026 fiscal year. The agency’s total budget would decrease from around $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. Around $6 billion of the cuts would impact the agency’s planetary science, Earth science and astrophysics research funding, which all form part of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

“We’re not talking about delays in scientific exploration, we’re talking about the end of it,” Nye said at a press conference Monday on the steps of Capitol Hill. “While we’re checking out, our competitors are checking in,” he added.

Under the proposed budget, NASA’s science research funding would be among the hardest hit by the cuts, with a 47% cut. In a statement, The Planetary Society called this cut an “extinction-level event for space exploration.”

ABC News has reached out to multiple NASA centers for comment, but the agency is currently being affected by the government shutdown.

“Cutting NASA science in half would end several missions that are spacecraft that are already flying and several missions that are scheduled to fly,” Nye told Diane Macedo on ABC News Live on Monday. “And why this matters is if you cut it in half, cut the science budget in half, you’ll probably turn the whole thing off.”

Casey Dreier, the chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, says his organization has a simple goal: protecting existing programs.

“So, this is no new money, it’s no changes in policy, it’s just to continue these projects that we’ve already invested in, already paid for and are currently returning in fantastic science,” Dreier said.

At Monday’s press conference, Dreier explained that at this point, “Both House and Senate [are] a near-full rejection of the proposed cuts to NASA science and broadly around other areas of NASA as well.”

The Science Mission Directorate is responsible for sending satellites into space like the James Webb Space Telescope, the Perseverance Rover (the spacecraft that landed on Mars in 2021) and the Landsat 9 satellite, which work to collect vital data and “achieve scientific understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe.”

The White House’s proposal referred to several missions as “unaffordable.” More than 40 projects have already been flagged for defunding, including the Mars Sample Return, Mars orbiter MAVEN and the Juno mission.

“The Budget proposes termination of multiple unaffordable missions and reduces lower priority research, resulting in a leaner Science program that reflects a commitment to fiscal responsibility,” the proposal stated.

There was also a specific request within the proposal for the cancellation of climate-focused projects, as well as funding for the Office of STEM engagement.

ABC News has reached out to the Trump administration for a comment, but did not immediately hear back.

“The Budget eliminates climate-focused ‘green aviation’ spending while protecting the development of technologies with air traffic control and defense applications, producing savings,” NASA headquarters said in a statement.

Nye and Drier say they are speaking out to explain the dangers of cutting funding for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and the National Science Foundation. Nye suggested that those cuts could ultimately have a direct impact on the United States’ position in the global race back to the moon’s surface.

“The China National Space Administration is going fast, doing a lot of extraordinary missions very similar, almost mission for mission, to what the United States is doing and I’m telling you there’s going to be a Sputnik moment when Taikonauts, China National Space Administration space travelers, are on the moon in the next five years,” Nye said.

U.S. Representative Glenn Ivey, D-Md., echoed those thoughts during the Capitol press conference.

“We’re falling behind with respect to China,” Rep. Ivey said. “They’re pushing money and engineers and scientists towards advancing science in China, competing against us, while we’re doing the exact opposite. The White House almost wants to zero out NASA science.”

More than 300 advocates joined the call to action on Capitol Hill Monday, along with 20 education, science and space partner organizations. Some of the groups represented at the press conference at the U.S. Capitol included the American Astronomical Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

“Finish the job. So, both the Senate and House have bills that reject these cuts, pushing back against these cuts, but we want them to sign it into law,” Nye said.

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(NEW YORK) — Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo told “The View” on Monday it would be a “gift” to President Donald Trump if Zohran Mamdani wins the election in November and becomes New York City’s next mayor.

Cuomo said he’s the “last person” Trump wants to see as mayor, citing their relationship while he was governor of New York. “We fought on a daily basis,” Cuomo said.

He alleged that a Mamdani win would lead to a federal takeover of New York City and then Trump would use Mamdani as an example during other elections about the dangers of electing a far-left politician.

Trump “will take a picture of Mamdani and run around the country and say, here’s what happened to the Democrats,” Cuomo said. “Mamdani is a gift for him … because it’s the excuse he needs to take over New York, which he said he will do.”

In a recent interview with “The View,” Mamdani said New York should be prepared to push back against Trump.

“This is just one of the many threats that Donald Trump makes. Every day he wakes up, he makes another threat, a lot of the times about the city that he actually comes from,” Mamdani said. “[Trump] wants to do a whole lot of things with this city, and we’re going to fight him every step of the way, as long as it is something that comes at the expense of this city.”

Cuomo denied allegations from Mamdani and other critics that he’s Trump’s pick in the race. Cuomo also denied reporting in the New York Times that he had recently discussed the race on a call with Trump.

New York City’s mayoral race is down to three candidates, including Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, after Mayor Eric Adams recently dropped out of the race. He said the race is down to a democratic socialist in Mamdani and himself, a true Democrat.

“What’s really happening is there’s a civil war within the Democratic Party going on, and the Democratic Party is looking for its identity. And there are two factions. You have the democratic socialists, and then you have the Democrats, they have a very extreme view that they’re pursuing, which is different than the Democratic Party,” Cuomo said Monday on “The View.”

After Adams announced he was dropping out of the mayor’s race, Cuomo gave him kudos and said his withdrawal indeed shakes up the race. He said that New Yorkers should be “afraid” of a win by Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani.

“I believe Mayor Adams is 100% sincere. I applaud his selflessness. You know, we often wonder, is it about us, or is it about a greater calling? And I think what Mayor Adams said today speaks volumes,” Cuomo said at the time. “He said, I’m going to put my personal ambition aside for the good of the city, because he’s afraid of the result if Mr. Mamdani would have [sic] win the election, and we should all be afraid of the result.”

And Adams no longer campaigning makes a difference, Cuomo said: “It’s not just about the polling. You know, the mayor was – is the incumbent mayor, so he is a potent force in the campaign; if he is not actively campaigning, that changes the entire dynamic of the race.”

Even still, Cuomo is running an uphill campaign after Mamdani delivered an upset win during the June Democratic primary. The former governor has been trailing the Democratic nominee in most polls and Mamdani has racked up major endorsements, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Cuomo has faced scrutiny during his mayoral campaign following his exit from the governor’s office four years ago as he faced mounting sexual harassment allegations.

During his appearance on The View, Cuomo said he now acts much more cautiously due to the “very painful” allegations.

“I learned a lesson, a painful lesson, which is to be much more cautious about everything you say, any joke, any comment,” Cuomo said Monday. “I won’t kiss a person on the cheek unless they initiate a kiss. So they taught me a lesson, just to be super cautious, because there is a sensitivity that has evolved that is real. If people feel it, it’s true, and it has to be respected.”

Cuomo made apologies back in 2021 when the allegations surfaced, but has since insisted he did nothing wrong, despite a state attorney general probe alleging he harassed 11 women. He was never charged with any wrongdoing,

Mamdani and other opponents have contended that Cuomo is still unfit to serve in office.

The former governor lost the Democratic primary after three rounds of ranked choice voting by nearly 130,000 votes. Cuomo pressed on and announced shortly after the defeat that he would continue to run as an independent candidate.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo told “The View” on Monday it would be a “gift” to President Donald Trump if Zohran Mamdani wins the election in November and becomes New York City’s next mayor.

Cuomo said he’s the “last person” Trump wants to see as mayor, citing their relationship while he was governor of New York. “We fought on a daily basis,” Cuomo said.

He alleged that a Mamdani win would lead to a federal takeover of New York City and then Trump would use Mamdani as an example during other elections about the dangers of electing a far-left politician.

Trump “will take a picture of Mamdani and run around the country and say, here’s what happened to the Democrats,” Cuomo said. “Mamdani is a gift for him … because it’s the excuse he needs to take over New York, which he said he will do.”

In a recent interview with “The View,” Mamdani said New York should be prepared to push back against Trump.

“This is just one of the many threats that Donald Trump makes. Every day he wakes up, he makes another threat, a lot of the times about the city that he actually comes from,” Mamdani said. “[Trump] wants to do a whole lot of things with this city, and we’re going to fight him every step of the way, as long as it is something that comes at the expense of this city.”

Cuomo denied allegations from Mamdani and other critics that he’s Trump’s pick in the race. Cuomo also denied reporting in the New York Times that he had recently discussed the race on a call with Trump.

New York City’s mayoral race is down to three candidates, including Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, after Mayor Eric Adams recently dropped out of the race. He said the race is down to a democratic socialist in Mamdani and himself, a true Democrat.

“What’s really happening is there’s a civil war within the Democratic Party going on, and the Democratic Party is looking for its identity. And there are two factions. You have the democratic socialists, and then you have the Democrats, they have a very extreme view that they’re pursuing, which is different than the Democratic Party,” Cuomo said Monday on “The View.”

After Adams announced he was dropping out of the mayor’s race, Cuomo gave him kudos and said his withdrawal indeed shakes up the race. He said that New Yorkers should be “afraid” of a win by Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani.

“I believe Mayor Adams is 100% sincere. I applaud his selflessness. You know, we often wonder, is it about us, or is it about a greater calling? And I think what Mayor Adams said today speaks volumes,” Cuomo said at the time. “He said, I’m going to put my personal ambition aside for the good of the city, because he’s afraid of the result if Mr. Mamdani would have [sic] win the election, and we should all be afraid of the result.”

And Adams no longer campaigning makes a difference, Cuomo said: “It’s not just about the polling. You know, the mayor was – is the incumbent mayor, so he is a potent force in the campaign; if he is not actively campaigning, that changes the entire dynamic of the race.”

Even still, Cuomo is running an uphill campaign after Mamdani delivered an upset win during the June Democratic primary. The former governor has been trailing the Democratic nominee in most polls and Mamdani has racked up major endorsements, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Cuomo has faced scrutiny during his mayoral campaign following his exit from the governor’s office four years ago as he faced mounting sexual harassment allegations.

During his appearance on The View, Cuomo said he now acts much more cautiously due to the “very painful” allegations.

“I learned a lesson, a painful lesson, which is to be much more cautious about everything you say, any joke, any comment,” Cuomo said Monday. “I won’t kiss a person on the cheek unless they initiate a kiss. So they taught me a lesson, just to be super cautious, because there is a sensitivity that has evolved that is real. If people feel it, it’s true, and it has to be respected.”

Cuomo made apologies back in 2021 when the allegations surfaced, but has since insisted he did nothing wrong, despite a state attorney general probe alleging he harassed 11 women. He was never charged with any wrongdoing,

Mamdani and other opponents have contended that Cuomo is still unfit to serve in office.

The former governor lost the Democratic primary after three rounds of ranked choice voting by nearly 130,000 votes. Cuomo pressed on and announced shortly after the defeat that he would continue to run as an independent candidate.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) — Conversion therapy, or the attempt to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity as a form of treatment, has been widely discredited by major American mental health and medical organizations for decades. Half the states have outlawed the practice as ineffective and harmful to minors, often on a bipartisan basis.

On Tuesday, a licensed therapist who offers “faith-informed” counseling services in Colorado will directly confront that consensus at the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to strike down the laws as infringements on free speech.

“I want to be able to speak genuinely, openly, have full conversations with my clients,” said Kaley Chiles, the plaintiff in the high court case, in an interview with ABC News, “without the state kind of peering into my office in these completely private conversations.”

“If someone comes into the office and they say, I am a biological male and I have been living and presenting as a female for a while now – those are the clients who I cannot have a full conversation with,” Chiles said.

The case pits the First Amendment against a state’s regulation of medical practices to comply with an established standard of care. It also implicates the rights of parents in search of help for children struggling during puberty and the mental health of LGBTQ young people in search of greater societal acceptance.

The Colorado Minor Conversion Therapy Law, enacted in 2019, says therapists licensed by the state are not allowed to try to “change behaviors or gender expressions” or try to “eliminate or reduce” same-sex attraction. Violators face up to a $5000 fine and potential loss of license.

The law does not apply to religious groups or faith-based ministries aimed at changing a person.

Therapists are allowed to provide “acceptance, support, and understanding” around areas of sexuality and gender identity as a child develops.

“Making you feel bad about who you are, or pressuring you to be someone else, that’s not legitimate therapy,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser told ABC. “The medical consensus is clear. That’s why it’s banned here in Colorado on a bipartisan basis.”

“This law allows children to be their best authentic selves, whatever it is. It doesn’t put a thumb on the scale either way,” Weiser said.

One in four American high schoolers identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, according to a first-of-its-kind 2023 survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three percent of teens identify as transgender and another 2 percent report questioning their gender, the survey found.

“What happens is that people do develop, their sexuality emerges, their gender emerges. Those changes happen naturally, but it’s not because some therapist has affected that change,” said Dr. Clinton Anderson, a trained psychologist who spent more than 30 years studying mental health care for LGBTQ people at the American Psychological Association (APA).

Citing scientific, ethical, and safety concerns, the APA, American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association and nine other mental health and medical organizations oppose efforts by a provider to change a young person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

“If you are trying to make them change, and they’re not going to be successful,” Anderson added, “then the distress they bring into the therapy gets compounded by their concern about being a failure, particularly in these religious contexts.”

Attorneys for Chiles dispute the consensus scientific conclusions about the ineffectiveness of using talk therapy for a goal of conversion and any harm that may come from it.

Chiles won’t say directly whether she wants to practice conversion therapy or whether she has successfully used the treatment in the past to help a client eliminate unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction or reach better alignment with sex assigned at birth.

She said the law has a chilling effect that prevents her from even approaching the topics.

“The statute is broad, overarching language and it prevents me from doing what I want to do with clients,” she said. “Minors who are coming to me voluntarily of their own free will, who might have values different from the state and who have goals that the state has forbidden – they can’t come and have the same conversation with me that they could before this law.”

Erin Lee, a mother of three in Wellington, Colorado, says her daughter Chloe was unable to find a counselor willing to help her resolve a struggle over gender identity during puberty because of Colorado’s law.

“She had already made up this, ‘I’m gonna go by Toby now’ and ‘I’m ready to cut my hair’ and ‘I don’t wanna wear girls’ clothes anymore’,” Erin said of her then 12-year-old daughter in an interview at the family home.

“We knew she was not a boy who was trapped in the wrong body,” she said. “We thought, we have to talk to a professional so we know what to say, because if in fact she’s just experiencing normal distress over her sex, we don’t wanna push her further into this trans identity.”

Lee claims a counselor who worked briefly with Chloe “was dodging the issue entirely” because of the law, which in turn pushed Chloe deeper into depression and contemplation of suicide.

“The law as I very clearly – it’s very clearly written and, as I interpret it, it prevents counselors from being able to help kids through their gender confusion. They can only help them into it,” Erin said. She founded a grassroots advocacy group, Protect Kids Colorado, to oppose the restrictions on therapists.

Chloe, now 16, said she has become more comfortable as a cisgender girl despite what her parents have lamented was a lack of resources to help her. “I felt a lot of shame and despair that seemed absolutely inexplicable,” she recently told a gathering of parent advocates. “I’m not a boy, and I was just really really confused.”

Still, many Americans who have experienced conversion therapy as minors – and therapists who once pushed the practice — now say it was dangerously destructive and rightfully banned.

An estimated 700,000 LGBT adults in the US have received conversion therapy –half were subjected to the practice as adolescents, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.

“The trauma of conversion therapy can last a lifetime,” said Matthew Shurka, 37, a self-described “survivor” of four conversion therapists over five years.

After sharing feelings of sexual attraction to other boys with his parents when he was 16, Shurka’s father sought out help from licensed therapists. Some said they could cure Matthew.

“They said that I was an easy case, that I should start to see my heterosexuality come back within six weeks,” he told ABC News in an interview. “My father made this situation life or death, and he really felt that he was saving my life.”

One therapist told Shurka that a key part of treatment would be no contact with female family members — his two sisters and his mother — which lasted 3 years. He was also coached as a teenager to use Viagra to help intimacy with women.

“Maybe I was able to perform on that specific evening, but the harm that I was doing to my mental self was starting – at times, it felt irreversible,” Shurka said. “That is when I knew that suicide may be an option for me, because I knew I wasn’t changing.”

In 2018, Shurka testified in Colorado about his experience, urging lawmakers to adopt the conversion therapy ban, which they later did.

“Any therapist can share their opinion on anything. That is their freedom of speech,” he said. “But when it comes to a course of treatment, that’s professional speech. I was given a treatment to cure my homosexuality that had no basis in any scientific finding.”

The Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Colorado’s law as a legitimate regulation of “professional conduct,” which incidentally restricted speech but was not viewpoint discrimination.

The Supreme Court will decide whether to affirm that conclusion and, in the process, wade into an impassioned national debate over how to best help developing teens.

“We know that young kids right now are hurting,” said Attorney General Weiser. “One of the ways we protect young people is we let them have autonomy about who they are.”

A decision in the case — Chiles v Salazar — is expected in spring 2026.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo told “The View” on Monday it would be a “gift” to President Donald Trump if Zohran Mamdani wins the election in November and becomes New York City’s next mayor.

Cuomo said he’s the “last person” Trump wants to see as mayor, citing their relationship while he was governor of New York. “We fought on a daily basis,” Cuomo said.

He alleged that a Mamdani win would lead to a federal takeover of New York City and then use Mamdani as an example during other elections about the dangers of electing a far-left politician.

New York City’s mayoral race is down to three candidates after Mayor Eric Adams recently dropped out of the race.

After Adams announced he was dropping out of the mayor’s race, Cuomo gave him kudos and said his withdrawal indeed shakes up the race. He said that New Yorkers should be “afraid” of a win by Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani.

“I believe Mayor Adams is 100% sincere. I applaud his selflessness. You know, we often wonder, is it about us, or is it about a greater calling? And I think what Mayor Adams said today speaks volumes,” Cuomo said. “He said, I’m going to put my personal ambition aside for the good of the city, because he’s afraid of the result if Mr. Mamdani would have [sic] win the election, and we should all be afraid of the result,” said Cuomo.

And Adams no longer campaigning makes a difference, Cuomo said: “It’s not just about the polling. You know, the mayor was – is the incumbent mayor, so he is a potent force in the campaign; if he is not actively campaigning, that changes the entire dynamic of the race.”

Even still, Cuomo is running an uphill campaign after Mamdani delivered an upset win during the June Democratic primary. The former governor has been trailing the Democratic nominee in most polls and Mamdani has racked up major endorsements, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Cuomo has faced scrutiny during his mayoral campaign following his exit from the governor’s office four years ago as he faced mounting sexual harassment allegations.

Cuomo made apologies back in 2021 when the allegations surfaced, but has since insisted he did nothing wrong, despite a state attorney general probe alleging he harassed 11 women.

Mamdani and other opponents have contended that Cuomo is still unfit to serve in office.

The former governor lost the Democratic primary after three rounds of ranked choice voting by nearly 130,000 votes. Cuomo pressed on and announced shortly after the defeat that he would continue to run as an independent candidate.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court has declined to take up the appeal of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was contesting her prosecution and conviction on grounds that the government had violated a non-prosecution agreement made with Jeffrey Epstein before his death. 

The Supreme Court did not explain its decision. 

Maxwell’s attorney, David O. Markus said he was “disappointed” by the Supreme Court’s decision.

“We’re, of course, deeply disappointed that the Supreme Court declined to hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s case,” Markus said in a statement. “But this fight isn’t over. Serious legal and factual issues remain, and we will continue to pursue every avenue available to ensure that justice is done.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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