{"id":4935,"date":"2025-01-15T17:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T17:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/bondi-changes-her-tune-on-special-counsels\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T17:04:11","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T17:04:11","slug":"bondi-changes-her-tune-on-special-counsels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/bondi-changes-her-tune-on-special-counsels\/","title":{"rendered":"Bondi changes her tune on special counsels"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Pam Bondi has <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.ca11.87822\/gov.uscourts.ca11.87822.54.0.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">argued in court<\/a>on behalf of a pro-Trump legal group that special counsel Jack Smith\u2019s appointment was unconstitutional because he wasn\u2019t confirmed by the Senate, despite his broad prosecutorial powers.<\/p>\n<p>But on Wednesday, Trump\u2019s pick for attorney general said under current law, special counsels \u201cdon\u2019t need to be confirmed by the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) homed in on the apparent contradiction in her position during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will follow the law, senator,\u201d Bondi said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnderstood,\u201d Coons responded. \u201cJust getting to the clarity about the position you have advocated and what the current law is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/01\/14\/jack-smith-trump-report-00198025\" target=\"_blank\">brought two federal criminal cases<\/a> against the president-elect. The special counsel ended his pursuit of those prosecutions shortly after Trump won the 2024 election. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pam Bondi has argued in courton behalf of a pro-Trump legal group that special counsel Jack Smith\u2019s appointment was unconstitutional because he wasn\u2019t confirmed by the Senate, despite his broad prosecutorial powers. But on Wednesday, Trump\u2019s pick for attorney general said under current law, special counsels \u201cdon\u2019t need to be confirmed by the Senate.\u201d Sen. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}