Mike Johnson Suddenly Knows Nothing on Pam Bondi Spying on Lawmakers

House Speaker Mike Johnson pretended Thursday that he knew nothing about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s plot to spy on lawmakers—even though one Democrat had already warned him.

A photograph of Bondi’s notes at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday showed that the attorney general brought a record of what Washington state Representative Pramila Jayapal had searched in the DOJ’s unredacted files on Jeffrey Epstein—sparking outrage among lawmakers that the department had overstepped the separation of powers.

Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, Johnson offered one of his classic amnesiac responses.

“I don’t know anything about that, I’m not commenting on it. I haven’t seen or heard anything about that, but that would be inappropriate if it happened,” Johnson said.

But Johnson was lying—he had been told about it.

Jayapal told NPR News earlier Thursday that after discussing the issue with Johnson the day before, she believed there was “bipartisan agreement” that lawmakers should be able to review the files without being surveilled.

Setting aside the possibility that Johnson hit his head very hard in the intervening hours, it seems that the speaker is once again lying in order to play defense for Donald Trump’s administration—at the expense of the rights and privacy of his own colleagues.

The Department of Homeland Security is on the defensive Thursday morning over new bodycam footage that contradicts its version of events in the Border Patrol’s shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago last year. 

Martinez was shot five times in October after she followed a Border Patrol agent’s car in Chicago, honking to alert her neighbors of their presence. DHS initially claimed that when the officers exited their vehicle, Martinez tried to run them over, “forcing the officers to fire defensively.” She was charged with felony assault of a federal officer despite ending up in the hospital herself, while the agents were lauded for their exemplary work by Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino. 

“The @FBI just arrested two individuals who were allegedly driving these vehicles and attacking our federal law enforcement officers,” FBI Director Kash Patel said at the time. “They have been charged for assaulting federal officers with a deadly or dangerous weapon. Attack our law enforcement, and this FBI will find you and bring you to justice.” 

Newly released bodycam footage makes it clear that isn’t what happened. 

“It’s time to get aggressive and get the f**k out, because they’re trying to box us in,” an agent says before turning the wheel sharply toward the left. “We’ve been struck,” an agent says, before getting out of the car and gunshot sounds are heard. 

Surveillance footage from the road also showed no immediate obstruction or boxing in of the agent’s vehicle. 

Texts revealed that Border Patrol agent Charles Exum, who shot Martinez, was called  a “legend among agents” and praised for his “good shooting” by his colleagues. Martinez’s felony assault case was eventually dismissed.

The DHS took particular offense to CNN’s Omar Jimenez’s reporting of the bodycam footage. 

“Are we watching the same video? This is CNN parroting a lawsuit complaint for the sake of getting an emotional exclusive interview to rile up their 53 viewers. They should just drop the charade and hire the reporter as co counsel,” the DHS account wrote rather angrily on Thursday. “Once again @CNN demonstrates a complete aversion to the truth. Border Patrol law enforcement officers were ambushed and rammed. The officers can be heard identifying the threat ‘we are boxed in’ attempting to avoid conflict, by driving away, and then clearly identify when this violent rioter hit them with her vehicle. ‘We are hit.’” 

The DHS account is simply repeating the exact things that this new footage draws into question. It certainly doesn’t look like they’re boxed in, and it certainly does look like their car makes a hard maneuver right before they say they’ve been hit. 

“I appreciate the response, but the agent himself testified he wouldn’t consider this a ramming and this is also his vehicle in the highlighted circle at the time of the shooting,” Jimenez said. “Do you assess this as ‘boxed in’?”

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of over 100 Venezuelan men it sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador last year. 

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg issued the ruling Thursday, giving the government one month to begin the process, noting that the men did not receive proper notice, due process, or a court hearing. Boasberg also said that the men would be able to petition for their return to the U.S. from overseas. 

“Against this backdrop, and mindful of the flagrancy of the Government’s violations of the deportees’ due-process rights that landed Plaintiffs in this situation, the Court refuses to let them languish in the solution-less mire Defendants propose,” Boasberg wrote.

If the government still has any of the men’s passports and identification documents, it has to return them, Boasberg added If they transferred those documents to El Salvador, “it shall make good faith efforts to obtain” them. The Trump administration will also be required to cover the air travel costs for any of the men sent to third countries who wish to return to the U.S.

The Trump administration has been fighting in court over the Venezuelans it sent to the brutal CECOT prison for nearly a year. The most famous case has been that of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose imprisonment was overturned in federal court and upheld by the Supreme Court. The government still resisted returning him to the U.S., but nearly three months after he was sent to El Salvador, it finally brought him back home where he awaits a final decision on his status.  

Others, including people deported for merely having tattoos deliberately misconstrued as gang symbols, haven’t been so lucky, languishing in a prison well-known for human rights abuses as part of a $6 million deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Now, if this ruling holds up, they will get some measure of relief from a merciless deportation policy. 

New Jersey’s newly elected Governor Mikie Sherrill is the latest Democratic state leader to take action to protect her state’s residents from President Donald Trump’s deadly federal immigration crackdown.

Sherrill signed an executive order Wednesday barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering, accessing, or using nonpublic areas of state-owned property without first receiving a judicial warrant. Examples of nonpublic state property include government offices, childcare centers, residential medical facilities, and state university residence halls.

While the Trump administration and federal law enforcement have tried to smear and threaten civilians monitoring ICE activities, Sherrill doubled down on blocking their efforts.

The governor also announced that she would launch a portal for residents to submit details of their interactions with ICE agents in New Jersey. The portal is intended to allow state investigators to hold ICE agents accountable for the kinds of illegal actions Americans have witnessed across the country, including the use of excessive force, warrantless searches or arrests, racial profiling, and wrongful detentions.

“Today, we are making clear that the Trump administration’s lawless actions will not go unchecked in New Jersey. Given ICE’s willingness to flout the Constitution and violently endanger communities—detaining children, arresting citizens, and even killing several innocent civilians—I will stand up for New Jerseyans’ right to be safe,” Sherill said in a statement Wednesday.

Earlier this month, Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s new Democratic governor, ordered state agencies to stop cooperating with ICE.

A MAGA lawmaker is blaming ICE’s heightened violence on local Minnesota leaders.

Senator Ron Johnson tore into Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison during a Senate hearing Thursday, accusing him of causing the deaths of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, both of whom were shot and killed last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“I, as a government official, would have said, ‘Back off. Let us work with ICE. Let’s cooperate with them. Let’s see if we can’t deescalate this,’” Johnson said. “But you, attorney general, did the exact opposite.

“Two people are dead because you encouraged them to put themselves into harm’s way!” Johnson said. “And now you are exploiting those two martyrs. That was a tragedy. It never should have happened.”

The Wisconsin Republican then claimed that activists in the region were being “trained” and “deployed” to escalate the situation with federal officers, citing instances in which protesters—such as Pretti—were captured on film kicking ICE vehicles.

On the ground in Minneapolis, that level of fabricated insurgency doesn’t seem necessary—locals are so irate with federal law enforcement and immigration agents that they have literally chased agents out of town.

But federal agents’ unwelcome presence, in Johnson’s view, not only precipitates but also apparently warrants the agents’ impulsive violence.

“Is it any wonder they’re at hair-trigger alert?” Johnson continued. “A tragedy was going to happen, and you encouraged it, and you ought to feel damn guilty about it.”

Then, after Johnson concluded his time speaking, he raised his voice again: “Yeah, sit there and smirk. Smirk. It’s sick! It’s despicable.”

Given an opportunity to respond, Ellison said that Johnson’s “theatrical performance” was “all lies.”

“You disgust me,” Johnson spat back.

After more than a month of protest and pushback from residents and local officials alike, Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that ICE would withdraw from Minnesota. But Homan warned that “quick reaction forces” would remain in the state to go after so-called “agitators.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come to another impasse over DHS funding, which is set to expire February 13. The two parties have been unable to reach a bipartisan consensus on whether to reform the violent agency.

Democrats have agreed to pass the package so long as Republicans concede to 10 demands on how to reel in ICE agents, such as requiring them to identify themselves, take off their masks, and obtain judicial warrants before forcing their way onto private property.

GOP congressional leadership, however, does not seem willing to change the status quo at all, decrying the seemingly bare minimum stipulations as “impossible” and “totally unrealistic.”