Attorney General Pam Bondi and Rep. Jasmine Crockett crossed swords in dueling cable news appearances Sunday, with the Trump administration’s top legal enforcer telling the Democratic lawmaker to “tread very carefully” in her criticisms of Elon Musk.
Bondi issued the warning during a Fox News appearance over Crockett’s support for a group organizing nonviolent protests against Musk-led Tesla, attempting to conflate the demonstrations with a string of vandalism targeting the company that she characterized as “domestic terrorism.”
“She is an elected public official, and so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk, and we’re going to fight to protect all of the Tesla owners throughout this country,” Bondi told the network’s Maria Bartiromo.
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Crockett appeared shortly thereafter on MSNBC and host Alex Witt asked for her immediate reaction to Bondi’s caution.
“I have never promoted violence whatsoever, yet I’ve also never made excuse for those violent actors such as the ones on January 6,” Crockett said, noting President Donald Trump’s pardons for the violent rioters who sacked the U.S. Capitol in support of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“So Pam Bondi, if you have an issue with terrorism, maybe you should talk to your boss about locking back up those guys that he let out that participated in January 6.”
Last week, Crockett spoke at a virtual event organized by the group #TeslaTakedown, which has organized nonviolent picketing of Tesla dealerships.
The demonstrations have come in opposition to Musk, the company’s CEO, and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is charged with taking a chainsaw to federal spending and laying off tens of thousands of government workers.
The #TeslaTakedown group, which also calls for Tesla owners to sell their vehicles and for stockholders to dump their shares, says it is organizing roughly 500 demonstrations on March 29 at hundreds of Tesla locations across the U.S. and abroad.
“This is a nonviolent protest that they’re calling for,” Crockett added during her MSNBC appearance. “One of the things that I told people to do is make sure you are adhering to the laws in your area. Make sure you know what it looks like to protest and to be able to raise your voices and to exercise your constitutional right to free speech.”
During the stream last week, Crockett said she would like “Elon to be taken down”—a quote Bondi seized on—but she emphasized multiple times that her calls for protest were nonviolent.
In addition to dozens of protests, Tesla dealerships and vehicles have been subject to a string of unrelated vandalism attacks, which Bondi and other officials have claimed amounts to “domestic terrorism.”
The attorney general insisted Sunday that her office will not back down from treating the alleged crimes this way: “We are not coming off these charges. We are looking at everything.
