Trump’s pressure on Pam Bondi and the DOJ

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

4.4 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As soon as he lost the presidential election in 2020, Donald Trump vowed he would go after his perceived political opponents. Now that he’s president again, he’s escalated his calls for criminal charges to be brought against some of those people — New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director James B. Comey, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California). He claimed that all three were “guilty as hell;” all three have denied wrongdoing. Earlier, a U.S. attorney general resigned under White House pressure after declining to seek indictments against Comey and James.

Host Elahe Izadi speaks with reporter Jeremy Roebuck about the orders by the president and what they could mean for the future of law enforcement.

Today’s show was produced by Laura Benshoff and Sabby Robinson. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sean Carter.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Donald Trump has long promised retribution.
0:06.1	Since 2020, he said he'd wage war against people he sees as enemies if he ever became president again.
0:13.3	Now he's back in the White House, and we're seeing what that looks like in action.
0:19.1	Over the weekend, the president took to social media with marching
0:23.1	orders for the Justice Department. The word unprecedented gets thrown around a lot these days.
0:30.0	But last night, the president took an extraordinary step. He publicly urged his attorney general,
0:36.4	Pam Bondi, to go after his political adversaries.
0:39.5	He posted just last hour, quote, Pam, I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that
0:45.7	essentially same old story as last time, all talk, no action. He called them, quote, guilty as hell.
0:52.6	And he complained, quote, we can't delay any longer.
0:56.4	I was watching all this unfold, and I really wanted to understand what this all meant.
1:02.4	So I brought my colleague, Jeremy Roebuck, into the studio.
1:06.0	He covers the Department of Justice at the Post.
1:09.3	Jeremy says the actions the president has taken to get directly involved in how the DOJ
1:15.3	prosecutes people goes beyond anything we've seen since Watergate.
1:20.8	For a president, that's extraordinary statement.
1:23.9	Here he was directing his attorney general publicly to prosecute specific people. It was huge,
1:31.1	and it came on the heels of an already busy, you know, a couple of months on DOJ. But this crossed
1:36.4	even further line.
1:39.8	From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports.
1:45.8	I'm Ella He Izadi.
1:48.4	It's Wednesday, September 24th.
	...

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