Ayesha Bakshi

And it's important to note that there's a kind of longstanding history, at least going back to Watergate and Richard Nixon's presidential administration, where there's supposed to be this separation between the White House and the Justice Department in order to prevent the president, someone with political motives, from being able to interfere with justice.

But we saw this with multiple indictments that have come down under this administration.

President Trump posted on social media that he wanted to see his former FBI Director James Comey charged.

He posted that he wanted to see the New York Attorney General Letitia James charged.

And basically, Pambandi installed a prosecutor who had never prosecuted a case before, a lawyer.

Pambandi installed her as a prosecutor to go get indictments against these two people, or at least that woman did go get these indictments.

The cases were later dismissed.

We've also seen the administration try to get an indictment against members of Congress who said that members of the armed forces shouldn't obey unlawful orders from the White House.

And that was a failed effort.

So in these cases, there are a lot of people who are concerned that there's an improper weaponization of the Justice Department and that Pambandhi's

department is becoming an extra wing of enforcement for the president's agenda and not maintaining the type of independence that when she was confirmed to her role at her confirmation hearings, she really pledged the department would adhere to, that it wouldn't show favor and partisanship in how it administered justice.

Pimbandi didn't say a lot in response to those accusations at the hearing.

A lot of times she was asked questions in a way where these accusations would be made and then a more specific question would be asked.

So to be fair, sometimes she wasn't given all the space in the world.

to respond to these claims.

But she didn't say a lot about these particular investigations and prosecutions.

Instead, she just defended the work of the Justice Department more broadly.

She said that she believes that they've achieved important things when it comes to reducing violent crime in the country, when it comes to going after potential violations of immigration law.

So she said she's proud of a lot of the work that they're doing, didn't have a lot to say about these specific prosecutions.

Yes, this was a kind of strange portion of the hearing.