There are two encouraging signs about the incoming Trump administration. The first is that the United States still has a Senate. Its members' firm repudiation of the unqualified and clownish Matt Gaetz for attorney general shows that its members can still stiffen their sinews and summon up the courage to curb President-elect Donald Trump's appetite for surrounding himself with sycophantic boobs. The other is that Trump didn't try to end run the process to force Gaetz down the throats of the American legal community.
Now the Senate must consider Pam Bondi. She can't help but look good by comparison with Gaetz. Some may think this was intentional, but we should be relieved that Bondi has the credentials to be attorney general after spending 18 years as a prosecutor and having served as Florida's attorney general.
That doesn't mean she should get a free pass. Senators should ask her about the $25,000 donation she allegedly accepted from Trump during her office's ultimately aborted investigation of Trump University. More important, senators should be concerned that Bondi used her status as a lawyer to support Trump's lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. Never forget that this connects directly to the central reason Trump is unfit to be president. He tried to overthrow the elected government of the United States through fraud, threats of violence, and actual violence. Bondi's willingness to back him through it all is worrying.
Now, Bondi should ask herself some questions. Will she use the post of attorney general to stand for a vision of justice or will she just take the job to support Trump's vision of vengeance? America's top prosecutor has choices to make about Justice Department resources. Does she want to support efforts to enforce America's immigration laws? Totally legitimate. Does she want to continue her fight against Fentanyl? Good for her.
But what about the Trump pledges related to "de-weaponizing justice?" What does that really mean? Unfortunately, what it likely means is that Trump wants to achieve the exact opposite thing. He wants the Justice Department to devote its resources to persecuting his enemies. It's all part of Trump's pattern of projection. He falsely accuses others of doing the very things he is trying to get away with.
Trump's claim that the Justice Department went after him for political reasons, is just untrue. The major flaw in the federal prosecutions led by special counsel Jack Smith was that the FBI and the Justice Department leadership dithered rather than move immediately against Trump's attempts to overthrow the election results and his illegal possession of secret documents. These cases involved monumental pieces of wrongdoing, yet the Justice Department and the federal courts allowed the New York chump-change cases against Trump—built on far smaller frauds—to get all the attention—and ultimately—the disapprobation.
The dark vision of a Bondi administration at Justice starts with the Trump enemies list—Jack Smith and his entire team, their families, and pets, Nancy Pelosi, Merrick Garland, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fanni Willis, Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney, Mark Milley, and on, and on, and on. Their finances and taxes, their associations foreign, domestic, and business can be scrutinized. Their alleged misuses of the levers of government. Everything and anything against these people could be Bondi's focus. And on top of that, she could foolishly fulfill Trump's original demand that the Justice Department agree with his 2020 election fraud claims despite the fact that they were rejected by more than 60 courts and anyone with a few working synapses in that warm jiggly thing under their hats.
So, what's it going to be, Pam Bondi? The rule of law or the law of the jungle? Will you run the Justice Department like Jimmy Stewart playing a senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Root out corruption, stand for principle, increase the respect for our institutions. Or will you run it like an episode of The Sopranos—as a mix of sadism, vendetta, and corruption in support of the boss of bosses.
Do us a favor before you start the job. Watch videos of both of them and then decide which of these two kinds of a characters you want to be as attorney general of the United States.
Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former Connecticut complex litigation judge and a former co-chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Employee Benefits. He is the author of the new book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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