Pam Bondi will be an attorney general like no other. And that's not a good thing.
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Even though Senate Republicans had torpedoed his shot at joining the Supreme Court; he became attorney general right after the most lawless president in generations (if not ever) attempted a coup; and the Department of Justice (DOJ) he led was constantly accused of being “weaponized” or “politicized,” Merrick Garland spent his time in office doing his job and maintaining a low profile.
In fact, he was frequently criticized from the left for being too cautious and not prosecuting Donald Trump more vigorously.
Garland largely limited his public appearances to official, nonpartisan events, and he rarely appeared on television. When he did, it was only to discuss major issues. For example, in an interview with 60 Minutes in 2023, he discussed threats to democracy, the criminal cases involving January 6 insurrectionists, and the prosecutions of Trump and Hunter Biden.
He also appeared on NBC Nightly News last summer following the assassination attempt on the former president. Usually, however, if you wanted to catch a glimpse of Garland, you had to be an avid viewer of C-SPAN.
Pam Bondi is taking a bit of a different approach.
Chosen because she is a proven Trump loyalist, Bondi has made it very clear that she intends to be a highly partisan attorney general. In other words, Republicans won’t have to worry about her being overly cautious.
Conversely, there is every indication that she will do exactly what Republicans accused Garland of (without ever producing any evidence): politicizing and weaponizing DOJ.
During her confirmation hearing in January, she hilariously claimed that she would be impartial.
“The partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone,” Bondi said. “America will have one tier of justice for all.”
Well, she certainly wants to let both Republicans and Democrats off the hook… as long as they support Trump.
We already saw that when DOJ’s request to dismiss the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) turned into the first full-blown scandal of the Trump administration.
Also, does the following sound like ending “partisanship” in DOJ?
“Well, first and foremost, we got rid of the Jack Smith team. Gone. Those people are gone,” Bondi said on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News Monday night. “We’re still trying to find … a lot of people in the FBI and also in the Department of Justice who despise Donald Trump, despise us, don’t want to be there.”
She added that it is her goal to “root” those non-loyal DOJ employees out.
“We will find them, and they will no longer be employed,” Bondi told Hannity.
Without naming names, the American Bar Association on Tuesday blasted the administration for its heavy-handed approach to purging DOJ of civil servants not loyal to Trump.
“Justice Department lawyers and assistant US attorneys have been the subject of personal attacks, intimidation, firings and demotions for simply fulfilling their professional responsibilities,” William Bay, the ABA’s president, said. “It is especially disturbing because the government has espoused publicly that it will not weaponize or politicize the Justice Department. The actions against Department of Justice employees belie these assertions.”
Finally, Bondi is also no fan of keeping a low profile. In addition to doing near-daily hits on Fox News, she also made an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC).
If Garland had ever done anything like that, Republicans would have lost their minds. And they would have been right to do so.
The office of attorney general is not a political job, and it should be done without interference from the White House.
We have no doubt that Bondi will have no problem with the latter. Because there is no reason for the White House to interfere if she is already doing Trump’s bidding.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
