What course should a principled republic take toward a figure like Pam Bondi, provided that, for reasons unknown, horse-whipping remains off the table?
Bondi, lately the attorney general of these United States, is a prime example of the sort of people who flourish in Donald Trump’s circle: morally speaking, she is a criminal, yet there is no suitable statute to prosecute her.
Bondi’s 14-month tenure at the Department of Justice was, as a matter of her official duties, a crime spree. Her legacy is that she used the DOJ to unleash a sequence of pretextual criminal investigations and prosecutions aimed at the president’s political enemies, even when there wasn’t the slightest indication of a legitimate legal case against them. Those targeted by Bondi’s DOJ as a matter of political vendetta include: Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, all of Minnesota; Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey; St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her; Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell; Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook; Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan; Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado; Rep. Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire; Reps. Chrissy Houlahan and Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania; Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona; Sen. Adam Schiff of California; former FBI Director James Comey; former CIA Director John Brennan; Attorney General Letitia James of New York. (The prosecution of former National Security Adviser John Bolton, no less political and pretextual where Bondi was concerned, is more complicated in that it is not solely the work of the Trump administration.)
That is quite a list—aside from assembling a handful of counterfeit “Epstein files” binders, Bondi appears to have accomplished little during her term other than abusing the extraordinary powers of the DOJ to harass and exact retribution from the president’s political foes.
Although it is a vexing situation, it may be for the best that there is no statute under which Pam Bondi’s prosecution would be convenient—if Bondi’s career as attorney general teaches anything at all, it is that in our currently debased political climate the DOJ cannot be trusted with a law that is flexible enough to treat such abuses of power as criminal. A measure designed to curb such abuses would, ironically, almost surely enable new ones. Bondi is licensed in Florida, where she served as attorney general, and Florida law contemplates disbarment for “cumulative misconduct” and allows permanent disbarment in cases “where an attorney’s conduct indicates he or she engages in a persistent course of unrepentant and egregious misconduct and is beyond redemption.”
Having recently celebrated the Resurrection, I do not believe that a human being is “beyond redemption” as a spiritual matter. But as to whether a lawyer or a government officer is beyond redemption: If Pam Bondi has not engaged in a “persistent course of unrepentant and egregious misconduct,” then who has?
