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Replies to post #502558 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

Replies to #502558 on Tornado Alley (PROG)
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fuagf

11/21/24 8:02 PM

#502563 RE: fuagf #502558

Flashback: Pam Bondi’s been a punchline during the impeachment trial. But her role speaks to something important.

"Update: Trump picks Pam Bondi for attorney general after Matt Gaetz withdraws "

The shamelessness is the point.

by Aaron Rupar
Jan 31, 2020, 9:20 AM GMT+11


Trump defense lawyer Pam Bondi speaks during the impeachment trial on Thursday. Senate Television via Getty Images

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has become something of a punchline during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in her role as the defense team’s Hunter Biden specialist.

Over the course of 10 hours of testimony on Wednesday, she only spoke once, but the halting and deliberate manner in which she pushed conspiracy theories aimed at shifting attention from Trump to the Biden family went viral .. .. and became the subject of a Daily Show video.



Things went downhill for her again on Thursday when she stumbled through an allegation about how Hunter and his father Joe Biden going on fishing trips together was purportedly evidence of corruption.



The point of Bondi’s remarks seemed to be that Hunter was in close touch with Joe Biden, and therefore that his father must’ve been in the loop about his work for Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that has been accused of corruption. But there’s no evidence that Hunter’s work influenced the Obama administration’s foreign policy, or that Joe Biden pulled strings to get Hunter his position. Hunter selling his family name, while unseemly, is not in and of itself corrupt.

Related: Could Trump actually get rid of the Department of Education?
https://www.vox.com/education/384779/department-of-education-trump-musk-betsy-devos

[Insert: Can Linda McMahon of the sex abuse connection do what Devos failed to achieve.]

Bondi’s arguments have nothing to do with the two charges against Trump under the articles of impeachment — abuse of power over withholding taxpayer-funded military aid to Ukraine in exchange for the personal political favor of investigating the Hunter Biden, and contempt of Congress charges for failing to comply with the investigation. Instead, her job is to change the subject; she wants to make it seem like it’s the Bidens who have a corruption problem.

But Bondi herself is a bit of a strange figure to serve the role of the “corruption”
expert. Let’s review Bondi’s own very spotty record on the subject.

Bondi decided not to sue Trump University after she got a donation from Trump, among other unseemly things

Bondi’s relationship with Trump dates back to 2013, when as Florida attorney general, she announced she was considering joining a lawsuit that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was filing against Trump University for scamming students.

But four days later, Trump’s foundation cut Bondi’s reelection campaign a check for $25,000. Lo and behold, Bondi never ended up joining the lawsuit .. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12242170/pam-bondi-trump-rnc-convention .

While still serving as Florida attorney general in August 2018, Bondi raised eyebrows by serving as co-host of Fox News’s The Five for three straight days. She didn’t end up running for reelection.

Bondi has been attacking Hunter Biden for serving in a well-compensated role despite having questionable credentials, but after leaving office in Florida, a firm she worked for was paid $115,000 a month for work she did lobbying for the Qatari government.

She left that role to join Trump’s legal team. In the months leading up to the impeachment trial, she’s served as one of Trump’s TV surrogates — a role in which she’s mangled basic facts surrounding the Ukraine scandal.



If all of this seems to point toward Bondi being a less than ideal choice to make the case for Trump about purported Biden corruption, you’d be right.

The shamelessness is the point

Bondi is just about the inappropriate person possible that Trump could’ve picked for her role. But the fact that she’s in that position anyway speaks to a broader shamelessness.

A key part of Trump’s defense has been to argue that the most personally corrupt president in modern American history is actually a principled opponent of corruption. Trump has claimed to not know fixers who worked with Rudy Giuliani to carry out his Ukraine scheme, despite video of them hanging out together at his Mar-a-Lago resort. He’s repeatedly pushed a number of easily debunkable lies about the timeline of the Ukraine scandal in order to make it seem like Democrats have just had it out for him.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican defenders have complained about Democrats not presenting new evidence during the impeachment trial, ignoring that the reason they’ve been unable to because Republicans voted to block them from being able to do so. And as new evidence of Trump’s misconduct has emerged, Trump’s defenders in the Senate and on his legal team have moved the goalposts from “there was no corrupt quid pro quo” to “corrupt quid pro quos aren’t impeachable.”

So shamelessness is a feature of Trumpism, not a bug. And while Pam Bondi’s performance may seem laughable to most, it’s been sufficient for Senate Republicans — and as far as Trump’s fate during the impeachment trial is concerned, that’s good enough.

https://www.vox.com/2020/1/30/21115581/pam-bondi-trump-impeachment-trial

Yet another who should be forced to withdraw.
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fuagf

05/16/25 7:55 PM

#526285 RE: fuagf #502558

Pam Bondi turning DoJ into Trump’s ‘personal law firm’, top experts warn

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Related:

Letter to Florida Bar Association to Alert of AG Pam Bondi’s Potential Misconduct
May, 2025 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176197351

Pam Bondi Picked Quite the Day to Dump Trump Media Stock
May too, - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176196822

Pam Bondi was getting paid over 100K a month as a registered lobbyist for Qatar. Oh, and the Trump
family of grifters closed a deal a couple weeks ago to build a golf resort there to the tune of 5 billion.
May - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176177208

Justice officials move to drop Adams case after 7 lawyers refuse, resign in protest
[...]The Justice Department on Friday filed a motion to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, leaving it to a federal judge to decide the fate of a case that has ignited a dramatic standoff between the Trump administration and veteran prosecutors in two cities.
P - The motion, filed in a New York court, was signed by acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove; Edward Sullivan, a veteran public corruption prosecutor; and Toni Bacon, acting chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, after seven other Justice Department lawyers had refused and resigned in protest.
[...]Bove’s push to abandon the case over the past week was endorsed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Chad Mizelle, the Justice Department’s chief of staff. While they ultimately got their way, the effort triggered an extraordinary showdown within the department and a remarkable show of resistance to Bove, a former personal defense lawyer for Trump who previously worked as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District.
February, 2025 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175818030
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Attorney general accused of targeting political foes, halting prosecutions and placing premium on loyalty to president

Peter Stone
Sat 3 May 2025 00.00 AEST


Pam Bondi at a cabinet meeting in Washington on Wednesday. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has taken radical steps to target his political foes, back a harsh agenda against undocumented immigrants and help business allies – steps which underscore its politicization under the attorney general Pam Bondi and undermine the rule of law, say ex-prosecutors and legal experts.

Some even say that the department has in effect become Trump’s “personal law firm”.

Since taking office a second time, Trump has relied on staunch loyalist Bondi and an elite group of justice department lawyers to investigate critics from his first administration plus political opponents and curb prosecutions of US business bribery overseas.

Ex-prosecutors point to how Bondi and the department’s top lawyers have halted some major prosecutions, fired or forced out lawyers who didn’t meet Maga litmus tests, and were instructed by Trump to investigate a key Democratic fundraising vehicle as examples of how Trump and Bondi have politicized the justice department.

Critics note that once Bondi became attorney general, she issued a memo establishing a “weaponization working group”, which pushed a false narrative that investigations by a special counsel into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election and his improperly retaining classified documents were politically motivated.

The transformation of the Department of Justice under Bondi has put a premium for staff on “personal loyalty” to Trump, say ex-prosecutors, which has damaged the rule of law and provoked multiple rebukes from courts and the resignations or firings of veteran prosecutors.

“The steps Trump and Bondi have taken using DoJ to punish enemies and reward allies while firing those who object radically transforms and politicizes DoJ in a way that not even the worst who have gone before them ever contemplated,” the former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig said.

“Trump’s transmuting DoJ into his personal law firm is, in effect, a rejection of the founding principle of the rule of law.”

Trump’s transmuting DoJ into his personal law firm is a rejection of the founding principle
of the rule of law
Paul Rosenzweig, former federal prosecutor

Other ex-prosecutors see the department marching in dangerous legal lockstep with Trump’s agenda and damaging its mission to protect the rule of law.

“Bondi and DoJ lawyers have certainly tried to make personal loyalty to Trump the justice department’s guiding principle,” said the Columbia law professor and ex-federal prosecutor Daniel Richman.

Critics note Bondi has also echoed Trump’s dangerous rhetorical blasts against judges who have ruled against his administration’s sweeping and haphazard drive to deport undocumented immigrants by labeling them “low-level leftist judges who are trying to dictate President Trump’s executive powers”.

After the FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/25/judge-hannah-dugan-milwaukee-arrest .. for allegedly obstructing the arrest of an undocumented immigrant, Bondi went on Fox News to threaten other judges who may defy their agenda. “They’re deranged. I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not. We will come after you and we will prosecute you,” she said.

[Insert: Kind of wondering how the FBI can arrest a judge for obstruction of justice when there is no evidence justice was being served that she supposedly interfered with?... no arrest warrants for the guy ICE was after? They just scoop people up at will,
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176113345]

Hundreds of lawyers and staff in the justice department’s civil rights division are now leaving the storied unit as its focus has shifted to Trump priorities such as pursuing cases against elite universities and student protesters, while curbing some civil and voting rights cases it has traditionally pursued, say critics.

Other actions by the department under Bondi, an ex-Florida attorney general who later worked on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020, and some elite justice department lawyers reflect its strong allegiance to Trump and have sparked strong criticism.

They include an investigation of two officials, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who served in his first term and clashed with him for, respectively, not backing his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and for voicing strong concerns in a 2018 New York Times op ed about how Trump threatened democracy.

In another radical move, Trump issued an executive order in April telling the justice department to investigate unverified allegations that ActBlue, a major Democratic online fundraising vehicle, had engaged in improper fundraising schemes.

Trump also reportedly prodded the Department of Justice to drop a five-count criminal fraud prosecution of the New York mayor, Eric Adams, that the elite justice department southern district had worked on for months, as Trump was eager to secure public support from Adams for his immigration agenda in the city.

Some actions also appear aimed at helping allied business interests. In April, the justice department abruptly closed a cryptocurrency unit that was launched in 2022 and had successfully prosecuted dangerous criminal schemes involving North Korean hackers and other fraudsters, but which had come under fire from cryptocurrency leaders who helped fund Trump’s campaign last year.

Trump’s justice department also has paused for six months prosecuting businesses that have been charged with violating the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which bars paying bribes to win deals abroad.

Never in history has DoJ broken so defiantly from respecting, as it’s obligated to do,
the decisions of federal courts
Ty Cobb, former prosecutor

Other moves seem to reflect Trump’s enmity towards journalists who report critically about his administration. In a reversal of recent department policy, Bondi revoked journalists’ free-speech protections by greenlighting authorities to force journalists to reveal confidential sources in leak investigations. Meanwhile, Bondi also seems willing to protect political allies, such as when she declined to open an investigation into “Signalgate” despite extensive documentation that top national security officials had improperly shared classified information as an attack was imminent in Yemen against the Houthis.

Ex-prosecutors say that Bondi and the justice department’s willingness to make personal loyalty to Trump paramount damages the rule of law.

Critics note the justice department has been rebuked by federal courts for stonewalling court orders and questions about some of its deportation actions and for not bringing home a Maryland man originally from El Salvador who was sent to a notorious Salvadorian prison as a result of what Ice has called an “administrative error”.

“Never in history has DoJ broken so defiantly from respecting, as it’s obligated to do, the decisions of federal courts,” said the former prosecutor Ty Cobb, who was a counsel in the White House during Trump’s first term. “This is a war that Trump and Bondi are waging against the rule of law.”

Richman noted more broadly that “outside the immigration area, most of what Bondi has actually done so far, however, has been negative – like dropping the case against Mayor Adams and cases against FCPA defendants and firing prosecutors”.

Richman added: “We will soon see how this administration fares when it actually seeks a result in court, even if it’s only defensive. As the proceedings in the recent Maryland deportation case highlighted, courts demand a candor and respect for law that the justice department’s leadership finds inconsistent with the loyalty it demands.”

Some veteran prosecutors who quit the department after Trump and Bondi took office say that the pair’s first moves raised red flags that prompted their departures.

“Bondi has made clear – before becoming attorney general, and since – that she wants the Department of Justice to support President Trump unconditionally,” said Mike Romano, who resigned from the department in late March.

Before he quit, Romano spent almost four years working on the prosecutions of Trump allies who stormed Congress on 6 January 2021 in an effort to thwart Joe Biden’s certification by Congress.

Romano said that the night Bondi was confirmed “she issued a memorandum to all justice department employees in which she threatened to fire employees who refuse to defend the Trump administration’s actions, advance its arguments or sign its briefs. She and her subordinates have made good on those threats by firing people and forcing them to resign.”

Romano stressed that “some of my colleagues were fired, and others were demoted, because they prosecuted people who rioted at the Capitol. At the public integrity section, four of my managers resigned, in lieu of being fired, when they refused to sign a motion to dismiss the case against Mayor Adams. These actions send a clear message to people still at the department: if you want to keep your job, disagreement won’t be tolerated.”

We will soon see how this administration fares when it actually seeks a result in court
Daniel Richman, former federal prosecutor

Similarly, Barbara McQuade, a former prosecutor for Michigan’s eastern district who now teaches law at the University of Michigan, warned that Bondi’s memo setting up a “weaponization working group” actually “weaponizes law enforcement and undermines public confidence in government” because it pushes a “false narrative” about the two investigations of Trump by the former special counsel Jack Smith.

McQuade emphasized that “in fact federal grand juries returned indictments in both cases, meaning that they found probable cause that the crimes were committed. DoJ’s Principles of Federal Prosecution prohibit prosecutors from making charging decisions on the basis of partisan politics.”

Pointing to a further symbol of the justice department’s politicization under Bondi, McQuade cited her statement that a federal judge “supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans” and charged he “cannot be objective” because he issued a temporary restraining order blocking deportation of Venezuelan men to El Salvador without due process.

“There is no evidence to suggest that the judge did anything other than apply the law to the case,” McQuade stressed. “He was applying the law to a highly suspect use of the Alien Enemies Act, a statute to be used during wartime.”

Assessing Trump’s politicization of the Department of Justice, Rosenzweig said the department was betraying its historic mission to protect the rule of law.

“DoJ isn’t just another department like agriculture or HHS. It has a unique place in the US government as the home of the ‘rule of law’ and the guardian of what makes America special,” he said.

“Thomas Paine said: ‘In America, the law is king.’ Trump wants to make his word the law and himself the king.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/02/trump-doj-pam-bondi