CNN analyst Elie Honig blasts Pam Bondi for sounding like a 'press secretary' amid Signal chat leak row

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig has slammed Attorney General Pam Bondi for sounding more like a "press secretary" than the top law enforcement official in the US.

He made the statement as he appeared on the Friday, March 28 edition of 'The Lead', where guest host Phil Mattingly pointed to Honig’s latest piece in New York magazine about the Signal security leak, per Mediaite.

Elie Honig rips Pam Bondi for sounding like a 'press secretary'

The Atlantic on Monday, March 24, revealed that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz added its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a group chat with Trump administration officials who discussed upcoming airstrikes on Yemen on it.

Honig wrote in his latest piece, "It’s certain that Bondi and everyone else in DoJ leadership knows what happened. Yet I feel confident predicting that the Justice Department won’t lift a finger to investigate this mess."

Meanwhile, guest host Mattingly played a clip of Bondi answering a reporter’s question if her department would investigate the leak.

Bondi said, "First, it was sensitive information, not classified and inadvertently released. And what we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission."

Meanwhile, Honig replied stating that her answer underscored his point, per the outlet. 

He said, "Here we have a very high stakes, complicated set of facts. It cries out for a fair and impartial investigation by the nation’s leading law enforcement agency."

Honig continued, "Instead, what the attorney general has done is – with zero investigation, with zero facts – she comes out and decrees that the facts are exactly as Donald Trump would wish them to be. With zero facts, zero investigation, she says, ‘There’s no classified information.’ Highly dubious."

He further added that he had earlier said that the attorney general was qualified on paper, but she would need to assert her independence, per Mediaite.

However, he added that instead, “she has failed miserably” in that regard.

He said, "I have to say, when Pam Bondi was nominated, I came on air and said she’s absolutely qualified on paper to be the attorney general. But the test is going to be can she exercise independence? And right here she has failed miserably."

Honig added, "That statement was something much more like you’d hear from a White House press secretary than the nation’s top law enforcement officer."

Bondi suggests Signal chat leak is unlikely to be criminally investigated

Pam Bondi said on Thursday, March 27, that there would unlikely be a criminal investigation into the Signal chat leak scandal and added that the details of when fighter jets would depart and when bombs would fall were "not classified", per New York Times.

Speaking at a news conference in Virginia, Bondi said that it was a very successful mission as she accused Democrats from previous administrations of mishandling classified information.

She said, "If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was in Hillary Clinton’s home."

Bondi added, "Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage, that Hunter Biden had access to."

Notably, the Justice Department investigated into Clinton and Biden in those instances, but neither ultimately faced criminal charges, per the outlet.

Moreover, Bondi seemed to be ruling out any similar investigation to determine all the facts, according to the New York Times.