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Pam Bondi has a strong claim to being the most corrupt and subservient attorney general in US history. So when Trump fired her in April, there was an outpouring of bipartisan celebration. Everyone from Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu to bottom-feeding MAGA influencer Matt Walsh rushed to say that Bondi was incompetent and compromised, and that the nation was better off without her.
Unfortunately but predictably, Trump did not fire Bondi for being corrupt and subservient. He seems to have fired her, instead, for not being corrupt and subservient enough.
Trump’s choice to replace her is not a more independent or accomplished attorney. Instead, he selected as Bondi’s successor his own former lawyer, Todd Blanche — a man who has spent the period since Bondi’s departure attempting to show that he can, somehow, contort himself into even more humiliating postures of drooling obedience than his predecessor.
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Whether Blanche can get confirmed given the current mutinous spirit in the Republican-controlled Senate is uncertain. But one thing is clear; Bondi’s failures were failures that Trump wanted and indeed demanded. If a minimally competent and principled attorney general is appointed during Trump’s term, it will be despite his furious efforts. That’s because one of the absolute core goals of his presidency is the perversion of justice and the destruction of the rule of law.
Job description: Do boss’s bidding
Trump does not want an attorney general who will administer the law in a free and fair fashion. He does not even want an attorney general who shares his policy preferences and will pursue them aggressively. He wants an attorney general who will act as his personal advocate and henchthug, putting his goals, grudges, cashflow, and whims above the good of the country.
Bondi knew the assignment, and she was eager to crawl on her belly and kiss ass in the wormlike manner Trump requires.
During her tenure, Bondi aggressively worked to end cases against those who Trump believed would be political allies (like then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams) and to prosecute those Trump believed to be his personal and political enemies (like Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and former FBI Director James Comey). She gutted white-collar criminal enforcement to benefit the wealthy oligarchs who Trump sees as his core constituency.
Bondi performed for Trump on television, spewing rabid partisan talking points to try to discredit congressional Democrats to whom, under the Constitution, she was supposed to be accountable — like when she called Rep. Jamie Raskin a “washed up loser lawyer.”
