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Oct. 7 (UPI) — Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, and refused to answer questions on several topics.

Bondi declined to answer questions about the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey regarding her discussions with President Donald Trump as well as the firings of Department of Justice attorneys who worked on Jan. 6 cases and her refusal to prosecute certain cases of Trump’s allies.

Bondi also avoided questions about the files of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s alleged friendship with him. She responded that the Democrats should explain their own relationships with him, CNN reported.

Sen Richard Blumenthal, D-N.Y., said Bondi’s testimony was a new low for attorneys general.

“Her apparent strategy is to attack and conceal. Frankly, I’ve been through close to 15 of these attorney general accountability hearings, and I have never seen anything close to it in terms of the combativeness, the evasiveness and sometimes deceptiveness,” Blumenthal told reporters after leaving the hearing. “I think it is possibly a new low for attorneys general testifying before the United States Congress, and I just hope my Republican colleagues will demand more accountability than what we have seen so far.”

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., agreed with Blumenthal.

“She was fully prepared for, with specific and personal comebacks, accusing various of my colleagues, of challenging their integrity or challenging their basis for their questions in a way I’ve not ever seen,” Coons said.

The White House has already praised Bondi’s performance.

“She’s doing great,” a White House official told CNN. “Not only is the AG debunking every single bogus Democrat talking point, but she’s highlighting the Democrats’ own hypocrisy and they have no response.”

Bondi, along with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, criticized the judge in the case of Sophie Roske, the woman who planned an attack on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Roske, who called the police on herself before making contact with Kavanaugh, was sentenced to eight years in prison for the plot.

“My prosecutors did an incredible job on that case,” Bondi said. She said the Justice Department would appeal the sentence, which was 22 years below the federal guidelines and the minimum sentence prosecutors wanted. “The judge also would not refer to the defendant by his biological name,” Bondi said. Roske is transgender.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked Bondi what conversations she has had with the White House about investigations into Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Comey. Bondi again declined to answer.

“I’m not going to discuss any conversations,” Bondi said to Klobuchar, CBS News reported.

Klobuchar asked her about a Truth Social post by Trump last in which he asked Bondi why she hadn’t brought charges against Comey, Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“President Trump is the most transparent president in American history, and I don’t think he said anything that he hasn’t said for years,” Bondi said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., pressed her on whether the FBI found any pictures of Trump “with half-naked young women,” saying that Epstein was reported to have shown them around.

“You know, Sen. Whitehouse? You sit here and make salacious remarks, once again, trying to slander President Trump, left and right, when you’re the one who was taking money from one of Epstein’s closest confidants,” Bondi responded, referring to tech entrepreneur and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who has said he regretted his contacts with Epstein, CBS reported.

Since Bondi took over at the Justice Department, she and her team have fired prosecutors who worked on capitol riot cases and pushed out career FBI agents.

The Public Integrity Section is nearly empty now, and more than 70% of the lawyers in the Civil Rights Division are also gone, NPR reported.

In a letter Monday, nearly 300 former Justice Department employees asked the Oversight Committee to closely monitor the department.

“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously. Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing,” the letter said.

The letter also alleged poor treatment of staff.

“As for its treatment of its employees, the current leadership’s behavior has been appalling. … And demonizing, firing, demoting, involuntarily transferring, and directing employees to violate their ethical duties has already caused an exodus of over 5,000 of us — draining the Department of priceless institutional knowledge and expertise, and impairing its historical success in recruiting top talent. We may feel the effects of this for generations.”

Bondi said the DOJ stands by the “many terminations” in the department since Trump took office. “We stand by all of those,” she said.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in an opening statement, “What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil.”

Durbin said Bondi has left “an enormous stain in American history.”

“It will take decades to recover,” he said.

The hearing is just two weeks after she sought and secured an indictment of Comey at the direction of the president. Democrats have said she’s weaponizing the Department of Justice, breaking with the longstanding tradition of keeping the department independent of political goals.

Comey was indicted on one count each of lying to Congress and obstructing justice for his testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020. Before the indictment, U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert refused to indict because of a lack of evidence against Comey. Trump accused him of waiting too long to indict and nearly allowing the statute of limitations to run out. Siebert resigned under pressure from the administration.

Last week, Durbin said the targeting of Trump’s political enemies is “a code-red alarm for the rule of law” in a floor speech, The Washington Post reported.

“Never in the history of our country has a president so brazenly demanded the baseless prosecution of his rivals,” he said. “And he doesn’t even try to hide it.”

But Republicans claim that Bondi’s leadership is necessary after years of what they say was politicized attacks from the Justice Department under the President Joe Biden administration.

“If the facts and the evidence support the finding that Comey lied to Congress and obstructed our work, he ought to be held accountable,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chair of the Judiciary Committee.

During her confirmation hearing, Bondi vowed that weaponization of the Justice Department is over.

“I will not politicize that office,” Bondi said at the time. “I will not target people simply because of their political affiliation.”

Los Angeles County supervisors criticized the long-awaited $1.9-million outside investigation on government failures during the January wildfires as full of gaping holes after outcry from residents who say the report failed to answer their key question: Why did evacuation alerts come so late for so many?

“I’ve heard from many residents, some of whom are in the audience, who share that this report leads to more questions than answers, and, quite frankly, a lot of anger,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents unincorporated Altadena, as the board discussed the report’s findings at its Tuesday meeting.

Nineteen people died in the Eaton fire, all but one of whom was found in west Altadena, an area that did not get evacuation alerts until hours after the fire threatened the area.

The report from McChrystal Group found, among other failures, that there was no clear guide of which county department was responsible for deciding which areas to evacuate. The responsibility for evacuations is split among the Office of Emergency Management, the Sheriff’s Department and the Fire Department, and none have taken responsibility for the evacuation blunders. The county also failed to consistently issue evacuation warnings to neighborhoods next to ones that were under an evacuation order, the report found.

The pushback by supervisors is notable because they commissioned the report in January and vowed it would get to the bottom of what went wrong. When it was unveiled last week, top county officials hailed it as a blueprint for improvements. But it almost immediately faced criticism from residents and others.

Despite the shortcomings, the supervisors said they were eager to implement the report’s recommendations, which included making it clear who was responsible for issuing evacuations and beefing up staffing for the Office of Emergency Management. The supervisors unanimously approved a motion Tuesday, to start the process of implementing some of the report’s recommendations.

One of the report’s problems, Barger said, is that so many noncounty agencies declined to participate in the report. Several California fire agencies including the Pasadena Fire Department, the state’s Office of Emergency Services and the Los Angeles Fire Department declined to provide information, according to the report.

“It is inexcusable and I would challenge any one of those departments, or any one of those chiefs, to look the survivors in the eye and explain why they were compelled not to cooperate, because that does lead to ‘What are you hiding?’” said Barger, who said she was “incredibly frustrated and disappointed.”

“We have very one-sided information,” acknowledged Erin Sutton, a partner with McChrystal Group. “It is the county information.”

Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said the consultants had been “unable to compel” other agencies to share their automatic vehicle locator data. The Times used county vehicle locator data earlier this year to reveal that most county fire trucks didn’t shift into west Altadena until long after it was ravaged by fire. The Times was not able to obtain vehicle locator data from any of the other fire agencies that were dispatched to the Eaton fire that night.

“We were out of L.A. County Fire trucks. We were relying on our mutual aid partners that were there,” Marrone said. “We just don’t have their data.”

The Sheriff’s Department has also yet to release vehicle locator data on where deputies were that evening. Sheriff Robert Luna said Tuesday that the department had dozens of deputies assisting with evacuations that night.

“We can absolutely do better, and we’re already putting systems in place so that we can do better,” Luna told the supervisors Tuesday. “They weren’t waiting for warnings.”

A spokesperson for the Pasadena Fire Department said the agency didn’t participate beyond providing written information because the “scope of the review was the response by Los Angeles County.” The L.A. Fire Department said it didn’t participate because it was outside the agency’s jurisdiction. The state’s Office of Emergency Services noted it was already conducting its own review.

“I too am frustrated by what I feel are areas of incompleteness,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district was scarred by the Palisades fire.

The 133-page report makes only one mention of deaths from the fire. Horvath said she felt the report failed to include the “very painful” accounts from survivors and should have delved into the issue of rogue alerts that urged many to get ready to evacuate even though they were miles away from fire.

Supervisor Holly Mitchell said she wanted to highlight the racial disparity of outcomes in Altadena, an issue she called the “elephant in the room” and one that was not mentioned in the report. Black residents of Altadena were more likely to have their homes damaged or destroyed by the Eaton fire, according to research by UCLA.

Residents feel deeply that their experience — receiving later alerts and fewer fire resources than their neighbors — is not reflected in the report, she said. “We have to figure out how to acknowledge that disconnect, not diminish it,” she said

Congresswoman Judy Chu, whose district includes Altadena, said in a letter to the board that the report left “unresolved questions” around evacuation failures.

“The report does not explain why officials concluded it was safe to wait until 3:25 a.m. to issue the order, or who was responsible for that decision,” she wrote.

Standing on a vacant lot in west Altadena, hundreds of residents said they were frustrated with the report.

“Officials have responded with unconscionable ineptitude,” said Kara Vallow, who said she believed the document “goes out of its way to avoid accountability.”

Speakers called for Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate separately, questioning the independence of the report. Survivors held signs with victims’ names, while others questioned why alerts came so late for west Altadena.

Lauren Randolph, a west Altadena resident, asked why, if flames were near her home in Farnsworth Park at 2:20 a.m., her family nearby didn’t receive an evacuation alert until almost 3:25 a.m.

“I ask again — who was in charge?” she said.

She said she felt the report failed to look into west Altadena, where she alleged that 911 calls were ignored and evacuation notices came late, noting that the area was home to most of Altadena’s Black and brown families.

The report emphasized that the “fire front” had not crossed into west Altadena, where nearly all the deaths took place, until around 5 a.m., nearly two hours after the evacuation orders came for the area. But many west Altadenans decried the description, saying their homes started to burn long before then.

“That is not true,” Sylvie Andrews said, the crowd around her laughing at the assertion.

Shawn Tyrie, a partner with McChrystal Group, acknowledged Tuesday that the satellite images they used don’t provide a “definitive picture,” particularly in cases with extreme wind, ember cast and smoke.

“Those images are severely degraded in smoke conditions like that,” he said, leaving open the possibility that the fire was in west Altadena well before 5 a.m., as residents previously reported to The Times.

Many of the residents’ questions were echoed Tuesday at the Hall of Administration by Barger, who drilled down on the difference between the fire front, which didn’t cross into west Altadena until 5 a.m, and the ember cast, which started dangerous spot fires in the neighborhood long before then.

“For people I’ve talked to who lost their homes, fire front versus ember cast mean nothing other than there was fire in their community, in their neighborhood, burning down homes,” she said.

Marrone said he believed they should have taken the ember cast into account.

“With hindsight being 2020, we do understand now that we must evacuate well ahead of not only the fire front … but we also need to take into account the massive ember cast,” he said.

Marrone said repeatedly that his firefighters were overwhelmed responding to multiple fires that day. Firefighters battled the Eaton fire as hurricane-force winds scattered embers for two miles. Unlike the Palisades fire, the most difficult stretch of the Eaton fire was fought in the dark with winds requiring all aircraft grounded by 6:45 p.m as the fire was just beginning. This left first responders without an aerial view of the flames, reducing their awareness of the fire direction.

Marrone said they’ve made a National Guard satellite program available to incident command, so fire officials can see the path of a fire on nights when they have no aerial support.

“Like I said before, and this is not an excuse, this was a massive, unprecedented disaster that presented severe challenges,” he said.

Barger also questioned why there was such a delay between when fire officials first noticed the fire was moving west and when the evacuation orders were issued. According to the report, a county fire official in the field in Altadena said they suggested to incident command staff a little before midnight that, due to high winds, evacuation orders should go out for the foothills of Altadena, all the way west to La Cañada Flintridge. About two hours later, at 2:18 a.m., a fire official radioed that they saw fire north of Farnsworth Park moving west along the foothills.

The first evacuation order for west Altadena came at 3:25 a.m.

Marrone said incident command needed to validate the report before requesting the order be sent out.

“That took time — probably too much time in retrospect,” Marrone said.

1 of 2 | The so-called BRICS group of countries is reportedly set to issue a formal statement criticizing the United States current tariff situation, when the group meets for a two-day summit in Brazil, hosted by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

July 5 (UPI) — The so-called BRICS group of countries is reportedly set to issue a formal statement criticizing the United States current tariff situation when the group meets for a two-day summit in Brazil.

Brazil, India, Russia, China, South Africa and the other five countries that comprise the intergovernmental organization, are expected to adopt a position of “serious concern” regarding U.S. President Donald Trump‘s enactment of so-called reciprocal tariffs, Bloomberg reports, citing sources familiar with ongoing deliberations.

Leaders of the BRICS countries are in Rio de Janeiro for the group’s 17th summit which begins Sunday and is being hosted by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Brazil currently holds the BRICS chair position and counts the United States as its second-biggest trading partner after China.

Earlier in the week, Trump confirmed U.S. tariffs will begin July 9 when a 90-day pause is scheduled to end. The president has previously been at odds with the organization.

After winning the election last year and before taking office, Trump said the group would “wave goodbye to America” if it created its own currency, adding he would also impose a 100% tariff in U.S. domestic markets if that scenario unfolded.

In 2023, BRICS formally invited Saudi Arabia and Iran to join the organization. Iran became the group’s latest member last year.

Last month, BRICS issued a statement on the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, using the same “grave concern” language.

The organization continues its recruiting attempts.

Last month, Colombia announced it would become a member of the BRICS-backed New Development Bank as the country looks to distance itself from its reliance on Western financial markets.