🚨PAM BONDI EXPLAINED - Kennedy CORNERS Bondi (IT'S FINALLY OUT)

[0:00] You will see how Senator John Kennedy cornered Attorney General over the phone records of a sitting United States Senator. [0:07] I'll show you the most crucial moment of this showdown at the very end. [0:10] Wait until the end of the video to see it. [0:12] To understand how Kennedy set the trap, you need to see that first moment. [0:17] Watch how it all began. [0:18] AT&T and I say, look, I know you're busy, but I want to see a copy of the phone records of a sitting United States Senator. [0:29] They're not going to just give them to me, are they? [0:33] No, Senator. Of course not. [0:35] In fact, they're probably going to ask me what what planet I just parachuted in from, aren't they? [0:42] Yes, Senator. [0:43] They're going to tell me to come back with a subpoena, aren't they? [0:46] Yes, Senator. [0:47] Okay. What do I have to show in that subpoena to get those phone records of a sitting? [0:55] Did I mention it was a sitting United States Senator? [0:59] I can't remember. What do I have to show to get the phone records of a sitting United States Senator? [1:05] Yes, Senator. There were actually eight sitting United States Senators, and you would have to have cause. [1:11] I'm sorry, what do I have to show? [1:12] You would have to have cause to get the subpoena. [1:15] Good cause or probable cause? [1:17] Probable cause. [1:18] Okay. [1:18] Kennedy had the answer he needed. Probable cause. [1:23] Two words that carry an enormous amount of legal freight. [1:26] He did not rush past them. [1:28] He held them there for a moment, the way a good cross-examiner does, [1:32] making sure everyone in the room understood what had just been established [1:36] before moving on to the next thing. [1:38] Kennedy wasn't asking random questions. [1:41] He was setting a trap, step by step, [1:43] getting her to agree to the rules before he dropped the real issue. [1:48] The next step was the subpoena deuces tecum. [1:51] Kennedy asked Bondi to distinguish between the two legal standards, [1:55] probable cause for a standard subpoena, good cause for subpoena deuces tecum, [2:00] and what exactly would need to be shown in either case. [2:04] Bondi walked through it. [2:06] You would need good cause, she said. [2:08] And what you would have to show is that you believed a crime had been committed, [2:13] or there was a possibility of a crime, or that it could lead to other crimes. [2:18] Kennedy pressed, [2:19] By the sitting United States Senator? [2:22] Bondi confirmed. [2:24] They would have to have believed the senator was part of a criminal conspiracy. [2:29] That answer mattered. [2:31] Kennedy flagged it and moved forward. [2:34] A judge would have to sign off on the subpoena. [2:37] Bondi confirmed that too. [2:40] Kennedy was getting her on the record. [2:43] He needed Bondi to confirm these basic facts so she couldn't back out [2:48] when the real questioning started a few minutes later. [2:51] He pivoted to the phone companies themselves. [2:55] Not to the legal standard this time, [2:57] but to what a reasonable general counsel at a company like AT&T would do [3:01] if that subpoena arrived on their desk. [3:04] This was a different kind of question. [3:06] Less about law, more about professional judgment, institutional behavior, [3:11] something that does not get tested in a textbook but plays out in real situations with real stakes. [3:17] Kennedy made the stakes plain. [3:19] He was talking about invading the privacy of a sitting United States Senator. [3:24] He said it again. [3:25] A sitting United States Senator. [3:28] The repetition was not accidental. [3:30] Bondi engaged with it carefully. [3:32] She noted that if a company believed a crime could have been committed, [3:35] they could not tip off the person who committed it. [3:38] She added, almost as an aside, that she had never seen Kennedy commit a crime. [3:42] There was a small laugh. [3:44] The room was still comfortable. [3:46] But Kennedy was not lingering there. [3:48] He moved straight to the motion to quash. [3:51] Could the phone companies have contested those subpoenas? [3:54] Hypothetically, Bondi said, yes. [3:56] For cause, yes. [3:59] Kennedy tightened it further. [4:01] If a reasonable person would have filed a motion to quash [4:04] and the phone company did not file one, they would carry civil liability. [4:09] Bondi's answer was measured. [4:11] Typically, she said, phone companies follow [4:14] a subpoena from a United States attorney. [4:17] Kennedy's response was quick and clean. [4:20] He said he knew that. [4:21] He said they did not have to. [4:23] She confirmed they could challenge it. [4:26] He pushed. [4:27] If they did not challenge it, they had better have a good reason. [4:31] The legal trap was fully set. [4:33] Kennedy got Bondi to admit to every legal standard. [4:37] Probable cause, judicial sign-off, the right to challenge a subpoena, and civil liability. [4:44] Now, it was time to spring the trap. [4:45] Now, it was time to spring the trap. [4:46] Now, it was time to spring the trap. [4:47] He turned to the question of copies. [4:49] Did Bondi have copies of the subpoena applications for these eight senators? [4:53] She said she could not discuss anything regarding this case. [4:56] He pressed, could she not even confirm whether she had copies? [5:01] She could not discuss any of it. [5:03] Kennedy asked when she would be able to discuss it. [5:06] She said she could not discuss whether there was or was not a pending investigation. [5:11] The refusals came quickly, one after another, and Kennedy accepted each one and kept going. [5:16] He was not thrown by the refusals. [5:17] He was not thrown by the refusals. [5:19] He had expected them. [5:20] What he said next made clear that he was not asking these questions to get answers from Bondi in that room. [5:26] He was asking them because the questions themselves were the point. [5:30] He told her he did not want this swept under the rug. [5:33] He said he thought the telecommunication companies were going to come after the Department of Justice like a bad rash [5:39] because they had liability for simply handing over those records. [5:43] He named the FBI agents. [5:44] He named the special counsel. [5:46] He was laying out, [5:47] in plain language, [5:49] a landscape of potential legal exposure that extended well beyond anything Bondi could address by staying silent. [5:56] And then he asked the question that had been implicit in everything since the start. [6:01] If he were her special counsel, [6:03] and she had appointed him, [6:04] and he wanted to get the records of a sitting United States Senator, [6:08] was that something she would expect him to tell her as Attorney General? [6:11] Her answer was immediate. [6:13] They better have. [6:14] Kennedy said yes. [6:16] And then, [6:16] before what was coming could be avoided, [6:18] any longer. [6:19] He asked whether, [6:20] in this specific case, [6:22] involving eight Senators, [6:24] anyone had told Attorney General Garland. [6:26] The exchange that followed was the most compressed and most pointed of everything that had come before it. [6:32] Do we know, in this instance, [6:34] of the eight sitting United States Senators, [6:37] if they told Attorney General Garland? [6:40] Senator, I just learned about this, [6:41] um, [6:42] very recently, [6:43] as did Director Patel, [6:45] and we cannot discuss the details. [6:47] I don't know many of the details. [6:48] Well, maybe we ought to get Attorney General Garland here. [6:53] Do you know if the special counsel told FBI Director Wray? [7:04] Is that something? [7:05] Let me put it another way. [7:06] If I were your special counsel and you were the director of the FBI and I'm trying to get the phone records of a sitting United States senator, did I mention it was a sitting United States senator? [7:17] Is that something that you would expect me to tell you as director of the FBI? [7:24] In general, I would believe the FBI would help execute the subpoenas. [7:28] Yeah. [7:29] To the businesses. [7:30] I want to switch to another subject in the 12 minutes that I have left since everybody else got to go over. [7:40] I've got to ask you about this, General. [7:43] That moment tells you something. [7:45] Not about guilt. [7:47] Not about politics. [7:48] Not about which side of the argument is correct. [7:51] It tells you something about what kind of hearing this was and what Kennedy had actually come to do. [7:56] He had spent the first part of the exchange. [7:58] Constructing a legal framework that both he and Bondi could agree on. [8:03] Probable cause. [8:04] Judicial sign-off. [8:06] The right to challenge. [8:08] Civil liability for failing to challenge. [8:11] Notification obligations running up the chain. [8:14] Every one of those points had been confirmed. [8:16] Every confirmation had been accepted without dispute. [8:20] Kennedy never had to fight for any of it. [8:22] Because the framework was sound and Bondi knew it. [8:25] What he did with that framework was the meaningful part. [8:28] He did not use it to make it. [8:30] He used it to make accusations. [8:31] He used it to ask questions that the framework made unavoidable. [8:36] If those legal standards exist, and they do. [8:39] And if those procedural obligations exist, and they do, then the questions about whether they were followed right themselves. [8:46] Kennedy did not write them as accusations. [8:50] He wrote them as logical extensions of what had already been agreed to in that room. [8:56] Bondi's position throughout was consistent. [8:59] She had recently learned about them. [9:01] She could not discuss details of a possible pending investigation. [9:05] She could not confirm or deny what had been communicated to whom. [9:10] That is a legally defensible position, and she held it without breaking. [9:15] But the questions Kennedy had asked did not require her to break it in order to land. [9:21] They landed on the record regardless. [9:23] The question about Garland, and then the follow-up about FBI Director Wray, did something specific. [9:30] They moved the accountability question upward. [9:32] Not towards the end. [9:33] Not toward Bondi herself. [9:35] But toward the chain of command that would have been in place when these subpoenas were issued. [9:40] Kennedy made the point through his own hypothetical. [9:43] If I were your special counsel, and I was trying to get the records of a sitting senator, would I be expected to tell you? [9:49] The answer she gave, that the FBI would help execute the subpoenas to the businesses, did not quite track with the question he had asked. [9:58] And Kennedy did not chase it. [10:00] He had made his point. [10:02] He moved on. [10:03] That is the structure. [10:05] Of what you watched. [10:06] Not a confrontation in the conventional sense. [10:09] Not a moment where voices were raised, or a document was slammed on a table. [10:13] The pressure Kennedy applied was quieter than that, and in its own way, more durable. [10:19] It was built from questions that had agreed upon answers. [10:22] Steered toward a destination that those answers made difficult to avoid. [10:26] Kennedy didn't need to shout to make his point. [10:29] He used the law itself to corner the Department of Justice, forcing them to answer for how they [10:35] handled the privacy of a sitting United States senator. [10:39] Now, I want to hear from you. [10:41] Do you think the DOJ went too far by going after a sitting senator's phone records? [10:46] Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. [10:48] If you appreciate this kind of straightforward, no-nonsense analysis, make sure to subscribe to the channel. [10:54] See you in the next video.