Bye Bye Bondi

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

 Josh Dawsey et al. at WSJ:

On Wednesday morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi descended the sun-splashed steps of the White House with President Trump, smiling at him just before entering the presidential limousine for a two-mile ride to the Supreme Court.

It was on that short ride in “The Beast” when Bondi learned she was being removed from her job.

During the drive, Trump told her, “I think it’s time,” she would later tell an associate.

The ensuing hours were as awkward and chaotic as Bondi’s 14-month tenure as the nation’s top law-enforcement official. Trump and Bondi briefly sat near each other during the Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship, but the president soon switched chairs. Later, Bondi would ask Trump if she could keep her job until the summer. The president declined.

Trump had decided earlier in the week that he was replacing her. He was frustrated she didn’t do more to contain fallout from the department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigative files and incensed that she had not successfully prosecuted a number of his political enemies. Trump has floated Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin as attorney general to other advisers but hasn’t decided on anyone, according to White House officials. He is also interested in evaluating how soon-to-be interim Attorney General Todd Blanche performs, they said.

Bondi and Trump had talked about her leaving since around the beginning of the year, according to a person familiar with the discussions, and he had regularly expressed dissatisfaction with the speed at which she handled his agenda. She is expected to leave the Justice Department in about a month.

On numerous occasions, she seemed to go out of her way to appease him, launching what many prosecutors in the department viewed as weak probes of Trump’s favored targets. Some of those cases were later blocked by judges or grand juries. The Justice Department even had a giant banner with Trump’s face on it hung on its main building, an unprecedented move that illustrated his control over the agency. Last week, she appointed a prosecutor to look into allegations of election fraud in 2020 in a bid to address another gripe the president had.

It was never enough.

Cash Homan Update

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.  Trump and company are also covering for their friends.

Whitehouse: What became of the $50,000 in cash that the FBI gave to Mr. Homan?

Bondi: The investigation of Mr. Homan was subjected to a full review They found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Whitehouse: What became of the $50,000? Did the FBI get it back?

Bondi: You're welcome to… pic.twitter.com/9mFjRTkJrS

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 7, 2025

Covering Up Cash Homan and Corrupting DOJ

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. Last week, a gunman murdered Charlie Kirk. Trump and his followers are exploiting the tragedy to attack their opponents.  Trump is also covering for his friends.

Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian at MSNBC:

In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.

The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said.

Alan Feuer, Glenn Thrush, Maggie Haberman and Devlin Barrett at NYT:

President Trump demanded on Saturday that his attorney general move quickly to prosecute figures he considers his enemies, the latest blow to the Justice Department’s tradition of independence.

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post addressed to “Pam,” meaning Attorney General Pam Bondi. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Mr. Trump named James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director; Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California; and Letitia James, the New York attorney general, saying he was reading about how they were “all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.”

Asked later by reporters about his message for Ms. Bondi, Mr. Trump said, “They have to act. They have to act fast.”

Apparently, Trump did not mean for the post to go public:

Trump criticizes Pam Bondi for not charging his adversaries quickly enough, in a Truth Social post that looks a lot like a DM. https://t.co/fDMqVwXGF2 pic.twitter.com/Re4IjAgc0t

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 20, 2025

 

Bondi Threatens to Go After "Hate Speech"

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. Last week, a gunman murdered Charlie Kirk. Trump and his followers are exploiting the tragedy to attack their opponents.  But some forms of retribution are too much even for MAGA influencers.

Tom Latchem at The Daily Beast:

MAGA leaders torched Attorney General Pam Bondi after she vowed to “target hate speech” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing—something the murdered activist said he did not believe in.

Bondi said her Justice Department would enforce hate speech investigations after the Conservative free-speech, right-wing activist was assassinated.

“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.

“We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

However, Kirk himself had repeatedly spoken about the danger of defining and punishing so-called ‘hate speech. ’

“Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” he posted on X last year. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.”

A video posted by Decensored News on X compared Bondi’s statement to Kirk’s own words before he died.

Describing himself as a “free speech absolutist,” Kirk told an audience, to applause, “My position is that even hate speech should be completely and totally allowed in our country.

“The most disgusting speech should absolutely be protected."

...

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume piled on: “Someone needs to explain to Ms. Bondi that so-called ‘hate speech,’ repulsive though it may be, is protected by the First Amendment. She should know this.”

Right-wing influencer Auron MacIntyre called Bondi’s remarks “the worst possible framing for what is a legitimate action against terrorist networks,” warning, “This will be the clip every leftist uses… it is a disaster at every level.”

Matt Walsh also lit into the attorney general on X, saying, “There is no law against saying hateful things, and there shouldn’t be.”

Bethany Irvine at Politico:

Asked by ABC’s Jonathan Karl about AG Pam Bondi’s comments that she would “go after” those who were “targeting anyone with hate speech” following Kirk’s killing, Trump zeroed in on the news outlet. “We’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll come after ABC. Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech … Maybe they’ll have to go after you,” Trump said.

Bondi, for her part, riled up both conservative and liberal circles with her controversial comment that was seen as a threat to clamp down on free speech — a debate that she attempted to further define today, POLITICO’s Gigi Ewing writes. “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime,” Bondi said in a post on X, claiming that the “radical left” has used it to “normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”

 

Epsteingate

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Its incompetence extends to current officials and nominees.

 Glenn Thrush at NYT:

The bitter blame game over the handling of the investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein erupted in public on Friday between Attorney General Pam Bondi and the senior leadership of the F.B.I., particularly the bureau’s deputy director, Dan Bongino.

Ms. Bondi and her allies believe that Mr. Bongino, who parlayed a he-man image and promotion of conspiracies into a top law enforcement job, planted stories in the conservative news media blaming Ms. Bondi for the backlash after an announcement earlier this week that the Epstein case would be closed, according to officials close to the situation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss conversations intended to be private.

It escalated into an angry face-to-face confrontation at the White House on Wednesday, when an irate Ms. Bondi accused Mr. Bongino of leaking information to the news media in the presence of the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and one of her deputies, Taylor Budowich. Mr. Bongino denied it, they said.

...

On Friday, a high-profile Bongino booster — the far-right influencer and conspiracist Laura Loomer — claimed, in two dramatic social media posts, that the bureau’s deputy director had taken Friday off to collect his thoughts, and was “now seriously thinking about RESIGNING” over Ms. Bondi’s actions in the Epstein case.

A person close to Mr. Bongino did not dispute her characterization, describing him as very angry and considering a range of options, including quitting.

It would not be the first time Mr. Bongino, who has struggled to retain credibility with the right-wing base while overseeing the bureau’s day-to-day-operations, has suggested the pressures of the job were getting to him: “People ask all the time, ‘Do you like it?’ No. I don’t,” he told Fox News last month.

Ashleigh Fields at The Hill:

Former White House aide Steve Bannon suggested Friday that the GOP could lose dozens of House seats in the 2026 midterms over the Trump administration’s handling of files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“You’re going to lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement. If we lose 10 percent of the MAGA movement right now, we ain’t gonna … we’re gonna lose 40 seats in ’26,” he told a live audience during his “War Room” podcast. “We’re gonna lose the president.”

 

Personnel is Policy

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  The administration's personnel choices are ... something.

Marc Rod and Emily Jacobs at Jewish Insider:

Multiple Senate Republicans said Wednesday that they plan to scrutinize President Donald Trump’s nomination of Paul Ingrassia, a far-right figure picked last week to lead the Office of Special Counsel, charged with fighting corruption and fighting federal whistleblowers.

Ingrassia has trafficked in conspiracy theories, including, as early as Oct. 8, 2023, describing the Hamas attack and ensuing war as a “psyop,” as well as defending prominent antisemites including Kanye West, Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes.

Several Republican members said they were not deeply familiar with Ingrassia’s record but planned to dig into it further before his nomination hearing.

 

"Trump is the constitution" - @PaulIngrassia, Trump's pick to run the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, replying to a user who disagreed when Ingrassia said, "When Trump gets back into office, he should remove his three Supreme Court picks and replace them with true loyalists." pic.twitter.com/XfW59eOsgs

— Jason Hart (@jasonahart) June 4, 2025

Hannah Allam at Pro Publica:

When Thomas Fugate graduated from college last year with a degree in politics, he celebrated in a social media post about the exciting opportunities that lay beyond campus life in Texas. “Onward and upward!” he wrote, with an emoji of a rocket shooting into space.

His career blastoff came quickly. A year after graduation, the 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.

The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign worker who interned at the hard-right Heritage Foundation, to a Homeland Security role that was expanded to include the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships. Known as CP3, the office has led nationwide efforts to prevent hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of targeted violence.

Fugate’s appointment is the latest shock for an office that has been decimated since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and began remaking national security to give it a laser focus on immigration.

Legal Incompetence

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Mark Berman and Jeremy Roebuck at WP:

Justice Department lawyers defending the Trump administration’s policies are encountering mounting criticism and frustration from federal judges, a sign of deepening tension between the executive branch and courts weighing its aggressive uses of power.

In recent hearings and rulings, judges appointed by presidents of both parties have criticized the statements and behavior of administration officials, accusing them of defying court orders, submitting flimsy evidence, providing inadequate answers to questions and even acting like toddlers.

The cases involve lawsuits challenging everything from President Donald Trump’s push to increase deportations to his efforts to punish law firms. Most are in the early stages of litigation. But the judicial pushback suggests a break from the goodwill courts have traditionally shown toward assertions by government lawyers.

The “deference that judges would give to attorneys from Main Justice is evaporating,” said John E. Jones III, a former federal judge in Pennsylvania appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush. Justice Department lawyers, he added, have “lost a fair measure of their credibility.”

At a hearing in D.C. last week about law firms, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates seemed unimpressed by some of the Justice Department lawyer’s answers, responding at one point: “Oh, give me a break.”

U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell was similarly skeptical Friday as she ruled Trump’s actions against a different law firm were unconstitutional, writing that Justice Department lawyer Richard Lawson, “when asked, was unable to fill in basic details” about the sanctions.

In Virginia, a judge scoffed at evidence the government offered in an immigration case in March to claim one couple were members of a violent gang. “I expect more from the government than this kind of very shoddy work,” U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema told the Justice Department lawyer, adding that if it were a criminal case, “I’d throw you out of my chambers.”