WATCH: Pam Bondi Stands Her Ground, Snaps Back At Dick Durbin’s ‘Gotcha’ Question

A subdued U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for attorney general nominee Pam Bondi briefly became heated when the former prosecutor lashed out at top Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) for lobbying a “gotcha” question meant to throw her off her game.

Durbin, the Senate Minority Whip and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, attempted to back Bondi into a corner by asking about the 2020 election and President-elect Donald Trump’s appeal to Georgia officials to “find” enough additional votes to sway the outcome in his favor. For years, Democrats have wielded the statement made by Trump during a private call with Ben Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, as evidence that he was attempting to interfere with the election, and Durbin was clearly aiming to see if Bondi would agree with his contention. Staring over his eyeglasses and down his nose at the former Florida attorney general, Sen. Durbin began to lay out the facts of the infamous call before Bondi called him out. “He said to the GA Secretary of State, ‘find 11,780 votes,'” Durbin started as Bondi sat patiently.

“Do you have the entire context of that call?” she asked. “I feel like it was longer, much longer than that and may be taken out of context.” Durbin backpedaled, agreeing with Bondi that the “hourlong” call contained much more than the brief statement made by Trump. Indeed, independent fact-checking organizations have found that Trump was out to do more than “find” additional votes: his campaign produced evidence of 23 “potential” episodes of people impersonating dead voters across the state, and an investigation by Georgia officials substantiated four of those instances. Trump also ripped Raffensperger, a Republican, for allowing drop boxes to be placed across the state as election officials scrambled to allow for remote voting to mitigate the risks of Covid-19. “And you had drop boxes, which is very bad. You had drop boxes that were picked up. We have photographs and we have affidavits from many people,” he also said during the call. “You have drop boxes where the box was picked up but not delivered for three days. So all sorts of things could have happened to that box, including, you know, putting in the votes that you wanted.”

Bondi claimed some of this context was missing from Sen. Durbin’s line of questioning. Flummoxed, the senator weakly shot back, “You can certainly listen to it, and I hope you will.” If the interaction amounts to the highest-profile spat between Bondi and any Senate Democrats seeking a reason to block her nomination, then she’s assuredly on a glide path to the U.S. attorney general’s office as soon as next week. Her luck in Wednesday’s hearing is no accident; for weeks, the Florida politician has engaged in a bipartisan charm offensive as she’s sought to find common ground with Trump opponents in areas like the criminal justice system and antitrust laws, Politico reported. “I had a good meeting with her,” said Democrat Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the outlet earlier this week. “She was very direct, very responsive … She’s got a lot of experience.”

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