This was not the first time Pam Bondi humiliated herself.
It was the first time she did it this brazenly.
What happened before the House Judiciary Committee was not a lapse. It was a continuation. An escalation.
She has shown before that she is willing to blur the line between law enforcement and political loyalty. She has shown before that oversight irritates her. But today, something deeper surfaced.
She did not behave like someone worried about consequences.
She behaved like someone who knows there will be none.
When pressed about the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files - about redactions, about transparency, about the dignity owed to survivors - she refused to apologize. Not cautiously. Not reluctantly.
Flatly.
And when challenged, she reportedly resorted to playground insults, calling Rep. Jamie Raskin a “washed-up loser lawyer” during sworn testimony.
That is not a slip of the tongue. That is a posture.
It is the posture of power that does not fear oversight.
The posture of authority that no longer feels constrained by norms.
The posture of someone who believes accountability is optional.
Authoritarian power never trembles under scrutiny. It sneers at it.
That is what made today different.
Not the heat of the exchanges. Not the partisan tension. But the visible absence of restraint. The open contempt for the process itself. The sense that Congress could question her all day and nothing - nothing - would happen.
An Attorney General should project sobriety and discipline because the office demands it.
Instead, she projected impunity.
And impunity is the oxygen of authoritarianism.
This was not merely unprofessional. It was clarifying.
When the nation’s chief law enforcement officer mocks oversight, refuses basic moral acknowledgment to victims, and treats congressional inquiry as an annoyance rather than a constitutional duty, it signals something larger than temperament.
It signals that the guardrails are no longer feared.
And when power stops fearing guardrails, history tells us exactly what comes next.
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*Tony Pentimalli is a political analyst and commentator fighting for democracy, economic justice, and social equity. Follow him for sharp analysis and hard-hitting critiques on Facebook and BlueSky
@tonywriteshere.bsky.social
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