From this writer’s lips to God’s ears. Pam Bondi is skating on ice that only one attorney general has ever so daringly gone out on and that man was John N. Mitchell, attorney general to Richard Nixon. Nixon and Trump share many qualities but not the idea that the loudest and ugliest voice in the room is the one that automatically wins the argument. Nixon was too smart for that, too good of a lawyer. That idea belongs to non-lawyer and game show host Donald Trump and Pamela Jo Bondi has taken the lesson to heart.
She, like John Mitchell, is going way beyond the parameters of her job. She believes she has an aura of immunity about her and that she is the law. She’s about to come in for a rude awakening, at least according to Rick Wilson. Bondi is about to find out that she and Mitchell share more than a job title.
And Congress, even a dysfunctional one, possesses tools sharper than press releases. Contempt citations are not symbolic gestures. Funding battles are not academic exercises. The resurrection of investigatory authorities has a way of becoming bipartisan when scandal ripens. The GOP majority is on the endangered species list, and accountability is coming in hot for Pamela Jo Bondi.
Mitchell once assumed he was the system. That proximity to the President placed him at the center of gravity. What he discovered, too late, was that institutions bend until they don’t. And when they snap back, they do so with force.
There is a dark comedy in watching modern officials treat Watergate as sepia-toned lore rather than a lived warning. The lesson was not subtle: the Attorney General is not the President’s fixer. The Department of Justice is not a panic room for the politically vile. And obstruction is not a victimless crime.
Mitchell didn’t go to prison for breaking into the Watergate complex. He went for conspiracy. For perjury. For obstruction. For believing that process crimes were technicalities rather than felonies. The same kind of crimes Pam, Todd, and Kash are committing today.
He went because he mistook loyalty for legality.
The question hovering over the present moment is not whether the Epstein files are embarrassing. They are. It is not whether powerful people would prefer selective disclosure. They would.
The question is no longer whether the Attorney General of the United States believes that shielding her Master is a defensible exercise of executive authority. She quite evidently does.
But this is a perilous flirtation with history’s judgment in service to a man with no loyalty or honor to his subordinates.
Records are being made.
Emails are being sent.
Instructions are being given.
And someday, someone will read them aloud in an indictment.
History does not always repeat itself, but it does maintain impeccable bookkeeping.
The first Attorney General to go to prison did so because he convinced himself that the ends justified the means and that the law was pliable in his hands. Pam Bondi should take that to heart, if she has a heart.
In Washington’s midnight hour, the lights burn long. The statements are polished. The documents are redacted, shredded, lost, and uncataloged. The lies are sold as legal prerogatives, falsely, but with volume and venom.
But somewhere in the background, the old echo remains, the sound of a prison door closing on a man who thought he was too powerful to ever hear it.
It is a sound worth remembering.
Bondi is now relying on offpoint, emotional manipulation in lieu of reasoning. There’s a phrase in Latin for it, which describes a classic fallacy of logic, “ad misericordiam.” It means “a diversionary tactic aimed at manipulating feelings to win an argument, rather than providing logical proof.” We see this constantly in Trump world and we saw it in abundance on Wednesday when apropos of nothing, Bondi started talking about the Dow and the Nasdaq, and attacking Jamie Raskin, “You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up loser of a lawyer. Not even a lawyer.” (The Congressman from Maryland is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former professor of constitutional law.) So who knows what Bondi was even attempting to do, other than give the MAGA folks at home something to be shocked/proud about, that a non lawyer dared to question the sitting attorney general and she clobbered him?
It was a childish tantrum which furthered no cause on Bondi’s part and even earned her the derision of various MAGA influencers like Tim Pool, Erick Erickson and Kyle Rittenhouse. Bondi has indeed decided that the loudest and ugliest voice in the room wins the game — but this isn’t a TV game show. It isn’t Fox News. Eventually the law will catch up to Bondi. And then look out. For now she makes John Mitchell look like a loyal but misguided Eagle Scout. And Donald Trump will not save her from his or her own excesses. You remember the old expression, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
Poetic justice, thy name is jail. I can hardly wait for this to happen, because she needs to go down, down, down, especially after what she did to the Epstein survivors on Wednesday. Get thy ass gone, woman!
Those poor women have been through sooooo much. And now it’s adding insult to injury, Bondi’s contempt for Congress, her contempt for the Epstein survivors. I am ashamed of this government, moreso for this Epstein issue, than even for the idiotic foreign policy nonsense.
Got it in one “… loyalty is not legality …” Her orbital alignment is not going to end well for her. Her mendacity is breath taking. Her pattern of decisions taken betray her jaundiced misaligned loyalty, suggests a myopic belief in her job and role. What she is doing for ‘P’OTUS is conditional that she will come to fall on her sword, after ‘P’OTUS deems her use-by-date has matured. A scream and a thud will then echo down relevant legal and other corridors of incarceration. She may even come to flip on ‘P’OTUS – the possibilities are endless, in any strategy aimed to achieve penance for the past misdeeds of a grubby loyalty.
I really wonder how this is all going to end for Bondi and I agree with Rick Wilson: loss of liberty. I think that unless she starts to think independently of Trump and actually behave like a lawyer (with a sense of self preservation) she’s dooming herself. Her sole salvation right now is to follow the law and do the job she’s sworn to do, not toady to Trump.
Except she’s not that smart. I question if she’s smart enough to do the job that she swore to do. Rick Wilson also said she’s stupid. I think the fact that she needs a thick binder of attack material when she goes to these hearings bears that out.
If she were ever brought up on charges wouldn’t you love to see her try that shit she did with Congress in a courtroom? A very, VERY patient judge might give her one warning which of course wouldn’t work. Upon the second outburst the jury would be removed and Bondi would be held in contempt, have her bail revoked and remain in jail for the remainder of the trial. Oh, and warned a third outburst would mean she’d be removed from the courtroom and have to watch the proceedings via video. These days her attorney(s) could have an earpiece and a microphone (like Secret Service agents) to keep in real time communication with her.
I’m convinced that this woman is mentally unbalanced. Her erratic behavior, her hostilitity & combative & confrontational responses to the members of the oversight committee is not normal behavior are not normal under any circumstances, but especially in a situation that commands mature behavior & informed answers to the questions from the panel. I can’t believe she’s this ignorant of the decorum & dignity her position is supposed to represent.
No, just fearful for her job. She turned Trump down when he first asked. Probably made it clear she’d be toast in FL if she didn’t take the job. She’s just doing what she has to in order to curry favor with Trump. Like when he watched the Jan. 6 riot saying ‘isn’t this great’ while his staff and family looked on in horror at his reaction to it all he was probably jerking off and splooging on the Resolute Desk. Most of his minions, some of whom might have been around on Jan. 6 were reacting to Trump’s reaction like happened five years ago. Miller probably knew how badly it was playing but didn’t dare say anything. The rest? Especially Wiles? They were in OMFG this is a DISASTER frame of mind. But they too didn’t dare speak up.
Trump’s ‘human printer’ probably had a tough time finding even conservative outlets posting stories praising Bondi.
I would have loved to have seen Wiles’ face after the Dow moment. She seems to be the only functioning adult in trump’s orbit. How long will she be around, and what will happen when she goes? I’m channeling the gates of Hell being flung open, and God smiling in the event.