Trump: Demanding the prosecution of his political foes

President Trump just crossed “the reddest of lines,” said Ruth Marcus in The New Yorker. Earlier this month, he forced the resignation of Erik Siebert, acting U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia, for failing to prosecute two of Trump’s “perceived enemies”: former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. How do we know Trump’s motive? He told us. In a social media rant addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump said Siebert would be replaced with Lindsey Halligan, his personal lawyer, and demanded Bondi “ACT FAST” to prosecute Comey, James, and Democratic Sen. “Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff,” declaring all three “guilty as hell.” Guilty of what, Trump didn’t say, though the MAGA-sphere is bustling with rumors that James and Schiff both falsified mortgage applications, and that Comey once discussed classified information with a friend. There is no evidence of any wrongdoing, but Trump is “not about to be deterred by such niceties.” It gets worse, said Michael Tomasky in The New Republic. News also broke that the Justice Department has quietly dropped a bribery probe of Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, who last year allegedly accepted a $50,000 cash bribe from FBI agents posing as aspiring government contractors. Homan says he “did nothing illegal.” A justice system that punishes the president’s foes and forgives his allies is yet another sign that “the United States is no longer a democracy.”

Trump’s demands of Bondi are an “outrage,” said National Review in an editorial. But “Democrats paved the way here.” The three targets named in Trump’s Truth Social rant—which some insiders believe Trump intended as a private message—were all prime movers of the Left’s own “lawfare abuses” against Trump. Comey and Schiff helped promote “the Russiagate smear that Trump was a Kremlin mole,” while James “tried to ruin Trump and his family financially with a massive civil fraud case.” That in no way excuses Trump’s wielding the power of the state to exact retribution, but Democrats would be more “persuasive advocates against lawfare if they repented for their own.”

The question is what Bondi does now, said Elie Honig in New York. Trump’s “public ultimatum” has put her in a “bind.” If she “refuses to charge the targets on Trump’s hit list, she risks her job and political future.” If she complies, conversely, her ginned-up cases will likely collapse at trial, if not before, and a furious Trump will treat Bondi like “a human pinãta.” The attorney general does have a third option, said Sasha Abramsky in The Nation. She could resign in protest, preserving what’s left of her dignity, her reputation, and public faith in the Justice Department. Anything less will seal her legacy as “a co-star in the destruction of America’s 250-year democratic experiment.”

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Don’t hold your breath, said Michael Warren in The Dispatch. Bondi’s a true believer in the “alarming” rightist theory that the Department of Justice should function as the president’s “private legal team,” and that the client’s demands take precedence over the law and Constitution. But she may recall the fate of John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s loyalist AG, who spent 19 months in jail after Watergate, said David Frum in The Atlantic. Unless Trump, with Bondi’s help, can fully rig next year’s midterm elections, Democrats will likely win back the House, costing Trump “much of his power—and all of his impunity.” As she mulls her next move, Bondi needs to ask herself whether she’s “willing to risk her career and maybe even her personal freedom for a president on his way to repudiation.”