20 JANUARY—I have not been able to get Pam Bondi out of my mind since the attorney-general’s astonishing appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last week, and I do not think I will any time soon. It wasn’t just her vulgar demeanor start to finish, or her arrogance in the face of constituted authority—an arrogance masking the same crude ignorance Bondi has demonstrated on many previous occasions. Neither was it Bondi’s rehearsed insults, apparently prepared beforehand and read from a ring binder as one legislator gave the floor to another: Jamie Raskin was “a washed-up loser lawyer,” Thomas Massie was “a failed politician,” a “hypocrite” suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome.” If you can think of a previous occasion when an A–G addressed members of Congress in this fashion, while giving sworn testimony no less, please let readers know of it via the comment thread. No, it isn’t Pam Bondi’s infra dig conduct under oath that remains lodged in my mind, or the stream of adolescent abuses Bondi permitted herself as legislators asked her to account for the DoJ’s patently illegal handling of the Epstein files. We must now look past all that makes Bondi merely a revolting human being: How many of these are there in high positions in the Trump regime? We must see in Bondi’s time before the Oversight Committee a display of the regime’s utter disregard for the authority of our crumbling republic’s legislative branch—the first branch, constitutionally, “the People’s House,” as Congress is sometimes called. To put this point another way, when the nation’s highest law-enforcement official uses our teetering republic’s judiciary as an instrument to subvert the constitution of our teetering republic, we are talking about lawlessness in the name of law. Corruption in high places is nothing new in America’s political history. Pam Bondi’s indiscriminate use of her power as attorney-general is, in my view. She faces us with questions, and I would say it is urgent to pose them. Mine follow. Has America become, before our eyes over the past… what?... decade or so, a failed state? Is it on the way to becoming one? If the latter, how far is America from the precipice? A subscription gets you:
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