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Look Out: Bondi Is in Self-Preservation Mode
The prospect that the Trump-appointed attorney general, FBI director, and his top deputy could be dragged down over Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories makes my head hurt.
None of them is fit for office. They’ve ransacked the Justice Department. They remain eager to abuse their offices to curry favor with the White House. But in this era that’s not enough to run them out of town. What might be enough is failing to properly perform one of the MAGA cult’s ritualistic dances. Suddenly Attorney General Pam Bondi is on the outs, with her two top FBI underlings threatening to turn on her and join the mob.
For those of us on the outside looking in, it’s not just baffling but enervating. Watching President Trump try to call off the MAGA mob is surreal.
What’s most important about this whole sordid episode is likely to be the lengths Bondi will go to shore up her position in MAGA world. She seems perfectly willing to and entirely capable of committing further transgressions of the rule of law in order to demonstrate her MAGA bona fides and stave off demands that she be sacked.
It’s difficult to parse which of Bondi’s latest outrages were already in the works and which are self-protective. But credit the national political coverage over the past few days with at least acknowledging that there might be a connection between the Epstein blowback and unusual DOJ moves like confirming the criminal investigations of John Brennan and James Comey.
In addition, Bondi has:
- fired another 20 DOJ employees, including prosecutors, support staff, and U.S. marshals, who were involved in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Trump prosecutions
- fired without explanation DOJ’s most senior ethics official, Joseph Tirrell, a career employee who had been with the department for nearly 20 years
- dropped charges against a Utah plastic surgeon who had become a MAGA darling even though jury selection was already underway for a trial on charges he sold fake Covid-19 vaccine cards.
The traditional tools of the Justice Department are now just baubles to be used for self-preservation by the attorney general and ultimately by the president. We are so deep into not normal.
Big Week for Emil Bove Nomination
Former Trump personal lawyer Emil Bove, who spearheaded some of the worst DOJ transgressions in the first months of Trump II, is expected to get a Senate Judiciary Committee vote this week on his nomination to the federal appeals court:
- CBS News obtained the 165-page questionnaire that Bove submitted to the committee and found that he declined to rule out third term for Trump or to denounce the Jan. 6 attack.
- Just Security carefully sifts through the internal DOJ documents released by career DOJ lawyer-turned-whistleblower Erez Reuveni and examines how they implicate Bove in violating U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order in the original Alien Enemies Act case — conduct the judge has already found probable cause to deem in contempt of court.
Speaking of Boasberg’s Contempt of Court Finding …
We’re coming up on three months since a three-Trump-appointee panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals put Boasberg’s contempt proceedings on ice with an administrative stay on April 18. That’s an extraordinary delay. It’s not only delayed accountability in the Alien Enemies Act case, but it has enabled Trump administration defiance of court orders across a range of other cases.
Give This a Listen
I joined Greg Sargent Friday on The Daily Blast podcast where we talked about, among other things, how bad things are at the Trump DOJ and the overall pattern of authoritarian escalation: Backlash against one authoritarian move begets more extreme authoritarian moves to stifle the backlash. Rinse and repeat.
‘The Evidence Is Not Credible’
I spent parts of three days last week in court in the Abrego Garcia case and tried to capture in a piece I wrote Friday the more subtle, less obvious ways that the Trump DOJ continues to stonewall the judge’s orders and show contempt for her proceedings.
For a quicker but still substantive reaction to the hearing Friday, a good thread from attorney Joe Dudek:
In Other Mass Deportation News …
- In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong blocked the Trump administration’s large-scale immigration crackdown in Los Angeles.
- The Trump administration gave a green light for providing as little as six hours’ notice to migrants before they’re deported to third countries, even if the countries haven’t provided assurance that the migrants will be safe from persecution or torture, according to a government memo obtained by the WaPo.
- The four U.S.-born children — 9-year-old triplets and a 7-year-old son — of an apparently undocumented woman have remained in federal detention in Washington state for more than two weeks.
The Death of USAID
University of Michigan political scientist Don Moynihan goes deep on the Trump administration’s unprecedented destruction of the primary vehicle for U.S. foreign aid:
The destruction of USAID had less to do with the actions of the agency than with the broader governing context of an American presidency that has embraced an authoritarian, conspiracy-driven and populist approach to governing. USAID may be the first case of a government agency killed by conspiracy theories.
Sign of the Times
Jan. 6 rioters are now the toast of the town at local GOP events around the country.
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