Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing criticism after she implied that the federal government will prosecute individuals for “hate speech.”

Ms. Bondi was interviewed on Monday by a former aide to President Trump, Katie Miller, and discussed the shooting of Charlie Kirk. Ms. Miller said that universities are “complicit” in “allowing conservatives to be harassed on campus. 

“What happens when you allow a university to harass conservatives and don’t expel or don’t take an action is what happened last week,” Ms. Miller said of Kirk’s death.

Ms. Bondi agreed, saying, “It is. And on a broader level, the antisemitism, what’s been happening at college campuses around this country is disgusting, it’s despicable, and we’ve been fighting that, we’ve been fighting these universities left and right, and we’re not going to stop. There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech.”

Ms. Miller asked if law enforcement would “go after” left-wing groups that are “using hate speech.”

The attorney general responded, “We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. And that’s across the aisle.”

Ms. Bondi referenced the arson attack on the home of the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, in April. 

“Think about Josh Shapiro … I talked to Josh multiple times. Democrat, Jewish, [and] they firebombed his house while his wife and children were sleeping upstairs. It’s a miracle nothing worse happened,” Ms. Bondi said. “We’re going to fight every step of the way to show that you will face some severe consequences if you come after someone and you target someone for their political views.”

The comment about punishing individuals for “hate speech” has garnered significant backlash.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression posted on X, “There is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment.”

“The attorney general would be wise to read the words of the Supreme Court, which has repeatedly held that the ‘proudest boast’ of America’s free speech tradition is ‘freedom for the thought that we hate,’ FIRE said.

A conservative commentator, Mary Katharine Ham, shared Ms. Bondi’s comments on X and wrote, “NOPE.”

A conservative columnist at the New York Times, David French, said, “Unreal. There is no ‘hate speech’ exception to the First Amendment. There is no constitutional basis for pursuing anyone for hateful words about Charlie Kirk (or anyone else). Hateful words are immoral. They are not illegal.”

The editor-at-large of Reason, Nick Gillespie, asked, “What the actual f—?”

Many users shared a post from Kirk in May in which he stated that “hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.”

During an appearance on Fox News’s “Hannity” Monday night, Ms. Bondi also said the Department of Justice is investigating an Office Depot in Michigan after it refused to print flyers for a vigil for Kirk.

“Businesses cannot discriminate. If you wanna go in and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that,” Ms. Bondi said. “I have Harmeet Dhillon right now in our Civil Rights unit looking at that immediately, that Office Depot had done that.”

Office Depot has apologized for the incident and fired the employee involved. 

Ms. Bondi defended her statement on Tuesday morning, writing on X, “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”

“You cannot call for someone’s murder. You cannot swat a Member of Congress. You cannot dox a conservative family and think it will be brushed off as ‘free speech.’ These acts are punishable crimes, and every single threat will be met with the full force of the law,” she said. “Free speech protects ideas, debate, even dissent but it does NOT and will NEVER protect violence. It is clear this violent rhetoric is designed to silence others from voicing conservative ideals.”

The defense did not win over her critics. A writer at National Review, Charles Cooke, wrote, “This isn’t a correction or a retraction or a retreat; it’s a post hoc attempt to bend the term ‘hate speech’ to mean something that it never has.”

 “So, just to check, given the encouragingly universal reaction to Bondi I’m seeing this morning: We’re all agreed, going forward, that there’s no such thing as hate speech, and that Jack Phillips can choose which cakes to bake, right? This is settled now?” he asked.

An ABC News journalist, Jon Karl, asked Mr. Trump on Tuesday morning, “What do you make of Pam Bondi saying she’s gonna go after hate speech? A lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech.”

Mr. Trump responded, “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll go after ABC.”

The president then said ABC paid him $16 million for a “form of hate speech.” ABC paid that amount to settle his defamation lawsuit.

Mr. Trump added, “Maybe they’ll have to go after you.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that “hate speech” is mostly protected by the First Amendment. However, the court has provided a handful of narrow exceptions, such as speech that constitutes unlawful incitement to lawless action, “true threats,” intimidation, or discriminatory harassment.