The Department of Justice May Not Survive Pam Bondi

At her confirmation hearing in January, Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to reassure senators about the job she would do as the nation’s top federal law enforcement official. His “overarching goal,” Bondi said, would be “to return the Justice Department to its core mission of keeping Americans safe and vigorously enforcing the law.”

His stated priorities were standard: stopping violent criminals, gangs, child predators, drug traffickers and “terrorists and other foreign threats.” Bondi also pledged to fire the Justice Department to defend the “fundamental rights of all Americans” and “make America safe again.” “Last but not least, if confirmed, I will work to restore the trust and integrity of the Department of Justice and each of its components,” Bondi said. “Under my leadership, the partisan militarization of the Justice Department will end. America must have a single standard of justice for all.”

By any reasonable standard, including his own, Bondi’s tenure has been a cataclysmic failure. Her first year as attorney general saw the Justice Department gutted by waves of firings and resignations. His political figures have misled federal judges, botched high-profile criminal cases and repeatedly embarrassed the Trump administration. The department’s reputation for competence and integrity is now in tatters.

Bondi’s tenure began with a clumsy plot concocted by his subordinates and Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for his help with federal immigration enforcement. This scheme was so obvious that a federal judge only granted the department’s request by dismissing the charges with prejudice, meaning they couldn’t use the threat of refiling them as illicit leverage. Several top prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan resigned rather than participate in this chicanery. Adams’ political career ended in disgrace, and New Yorkers elected a new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who refused to cooperate.

Adams’ plot came after Bondi issued a department-wide memo pledging to “restore the integrity and credibility” of the department after alleged Biden-era abuses. “Anyone who has acted with right mind and right intentions has no reason to be concerned about efforts to eradicate corruption and militarization,” she said.