Bondi laments attacking Trump foes amid talk of preemptive pardons

On By Littum

In the summer of 2023, Pam Bondi appeared on Fox News and expressed enthusiastic support for a provocative idea. Four years removed from the Republican’s tenure as Florida attorney general, Bondi looked ahead to 2025 and the possibility of investigating investigators.

“When the Republicans take back the White House — and we’ll be back in there — in 18 months or less, you know what’s going to happen? The Justice Department, the prosecutors are going to be prosecuted, the bad ones, the investigators are going to be investigated.” she said. “Because the deep state … they hid in the shadows (during Donald Trump’s first term). But now they’ve put the spotlight on them. And they can all be investigated and the house needs to be cleaned.”

In other words, a year and a half ago, Bondi’s focus was on Republicans taking control and targeting Trump’s perceived enemies. Of course, that was before the Floridian was the potential candidate for US Attorney General. Is she still as eager to launch such investigations 18 months later? Seam NBC News notedBondi no longer wants to talk about it.

Asked by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, whether Bondi would ever prosecute former special counsel Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland or former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, Bondi replied, “I’m not going to answer hypotheticals.”

It would have been pretty easy for the potential Justice Department nominee to say, “Of course I will never allow politically motivated prosecutions,” but instead she hesitated, as if the question itself lacked legitimacy.

Later, at the same hearing, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California asked the same question: “(Trump) has said that Jack Smith should go to jail. Do you want to investigate Jack Smith?” Bondi replied“Senator, I haven’t seen the file.”

The exchanges were relevant for a variety of reasons, not least the ongoing debate over whether President Joe Biden, whose term ends in just five days, will issue preemptive pardons to protect those who may face political retaliation from his Republican successor.

As recently as last week, the outgoing Democrat acknowledged on the record i a USA Today interview that he is indeed considering such a move before leaving the White House, although Biden did not go into detail about his plans, saying only that he was thinking about protecting “certain people.”

None of this has escaped the attention of Trump’s potential targets, including Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chaired the bipartisan committee on Jan. 6 — a panel the president-elect has denounced in hysterical terms. The longtime Mississippi congressman told Punchbowl News that he had spoken to the White House counsel’s office about the matter, adding that he would accept a pardon if offered.

“I believe Donald Trump when he says he’s going to inflict this retaliation,” Thompson said. “I believe when he says my name and Liz Cheney and the others. I believe him.”

Bondi’s comments during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing are unlikely to prove reassuring to Thompson or the president-elect’s other potential targets.