Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump is not good at waiting. When he wants something done, he wants it done right now. And he is annoyed that AG Pam Bondi has taken so long to indict some of his top "enemies," especially NY AG Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and former FBI Director James Comey. All of them have crossed swords with him; the "small" problem is that none of them has committed a crime.
Part of the reason that Bondi has been a bit slow on the draw is that she has to concoct some kind of criminal offense and make it appear strong enough that the judge does not throw the indictment in the paper shredder before getting to page 2. That isn't so easy since there are no crimes. Opposing Dear Leader is not a crime (yet). The nominal "crime" for James and Schiff is mortgage fraud. Former federal prosecutor Andrew Tessman, who has actually prosecuted mortgage fraud cases, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post saying that to prove mortgage fraud, the prosecution has to prove the defendant intended to defraud the bank and got a loan he or she would otherwise not have gotten absent the fraud. It will be obvious to any judge that a member of Congress will need two principal homes, one in his own state and one near D.C. The question on the mortgage application about "principal home" is there to weed out rental properties. Tessman said there is no case at all against Schiff or James.
Now Trump has demanded that Bondi get going. Rather than calling her into his office to give the order, he did it the old-fashioned way: Posting the demand on his it's-pretty-much-just-used-for-racketeering social media site. Here it is:
Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, "same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam 'Shifty' Schiff, Leticia??? They're all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done." Then we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job. That's why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard. He even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot. We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT
Needless to say, openly giving the AG orders to prosecute his political enemies is something that even Richard Nixon would never have done. It is a complete violation of the separation of the White House from the Dept. of Justice. Plus, Bondi has served him loyally in various positions for well over a decade, and he doesn't even thank her for her attention to this matter? Where are your manners, Mr. President?
This is not Trump's first attempt to politicize the DoJ, only the most recent. On Friday, Trump fired career prosecutor Erik Siebert as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and will replace him with Lindsey Halligan, his one-time personal attorney and special assistant to the president who has worked as an insurance lawyer and has never been a prosecutor. Siebert's offense is that he refused to go after James for the alleged mortgage fraud. This is all part of Trump's view that the entire DoJ is his personal legal team whose goal is to use the full power of the U.S. government to punish his enemies and let his friends off the hook, even when they are caught dead to rights committing a crime (see next item).
Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, lobbied Trump hard to keep Siebert in place. They said Siebert had cooperated on immigration and crime in the D.C. suburbs. Trump simply said: "I don't care." This puts all U.S. attorneys at risk. Technically, they serve at the pleasure of the president, but since Watergate, there has been a general consensus in both parties that the president should not interfere with their work. That has held until now. If U.S. attorneys now fear that failure to obey orders from the White House will get them fired, many of them are now going to start looking for new jobs before it happens. The result will be that Trump fills most of the 93 slots with political hacks who are uninterested and unable to pursue actual criminals and actual crime will go up, as potential criminals will realize the chance of being caught and successfully prosecuted is pretty low.
One of the reasons that Bondi may not be plowing ahead full speed to commit every crime Trump wants her to commit is that she probably knows that Nixon's AG, John Mitchell, served 19 months in prison for various crimes he committed in office. Bondi probably knows that someday there could be a Democratic AG who might go after her. But if she goes too slow, Trump will replace her with someone who does not know or care about Mitchell. So she is in a tough spot: Be punished now or be punished later. When you dance with the devil, guess what you get? (V)