Pam Bondi Forms Squad To Take on Jack Smith and Letitia James as She Probes Their Pursuits of Trump

The announcement by Attorney General Bondi of a “Weaponization Working Group” to investigate those who led the cases against President Trump is the latest signal from Main Justice that his grievances are finding form in the Department of Justice’s priorities. Ms. Bondi’s memorandum, issued this week to “all department employees,” is titled “Restoring the Integrity and Credibility of the Department of Justice.” The attorney general, previously Florida’s chief law enforcement official, writes: “No one who has acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions has any cause for concern about efforts to root out corruption and weaponization.”Ms. Bondi’s working group comprises the most prestigious organs of American law enforcement — her office, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office of Legal Policy, the Civil Rights Division, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. That elite pedigree suggests it possesses the full backing of the White House. The working group’s ambit is ambitious, as it will conduct reviews of “all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States over the last four years” in order to “identify instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice.” The DOJ will provide quarterly reviews to the White House on the progress of the working group’s review. One member of the working group will be Mr. Trump’s choice for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who represented the president in his criminal hush-money trial and frequently inveighed against what he called the “politicized prosecutions” of Mr. Trump. He accused the judge in that case, Juan Merchan, of bias against his client. The Weaponization Working Group’s purview, Ms. Bondi writes, includes probing “Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff, who spent more than $50 million targeting President Trump, and the prosecutors and law enforcement personnel who participated in the unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home.” The search of Mar-a-Lago, undertaken in the classified documents case brought by Mr. Smith, was conducted pursuant to a warrant. The erstwhile FBI director, Christopher Wray, resigned under pressure with years left in his term in part due to his authorizing the Mar-a-Lago search, which included entering the private chambers of the first lady and of her and Mr. Trump’s teenage son, Barron. Mr. Smith moved for that case and his election interference one to be dismissed after Mr. Trump defeated Vice President Harris in November’s election. The DOJ, which Ms. Bondi now leads, determined that there is a “categorical” prohibition against prosecuting a sitting president. To the end, though, Mr. Smith insisted that the “merits” of his prosecutions would have yielded convictions — if he had been able to proceed to trial. While Mr. Smith and his top deputy, Jay Bratt, resigned before Mr. Trump took the oath, one of the 47th president’s first acts in office was to order the firing of 12 attorneys at the DOJ who staffed Mr. Smith’s team. The termination of those career prosecutors could soon prompt legal pushback, as the president’s power to fire civil servants is limited by statute and the 14th Amendment.Ms. Bondi, who previously served as Florida’s attorney general, also vows to investigate “Federal cooperation with the weaponization by the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, their respective staffs, and other New York officials to target President Trump, his family, and his businesses.” Mr. Bragg secured 34 convictions in the hush money case against Mr. Trump over payments to an adult film star known as Stormy Daniels. The presiding judge, Juan Merchan, sentenced Mr. Trump to an unusual “unconditional discharge” that involved no punishment. The president has nevertheless vowed to appeal, and is now represented in that matter by the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. The case possessed an unusual posture. Mr. Bragg charged Mr. Trump with falsification of business records, a misdemeanor that was elevated to a low level felony because it was reckoned to have been undertaken in the pursuit of an unnamed second crime. Ms. James achieved a stunning civil fraud verdict against Mr. Trump, his two eldest sons, and the Trump Organization. Including interest, it now amounts to more than $500 million and also includes the appointment of an independent monitor and restrictions on doing business in the Empire State. Mr. Trump appealed to New York’s first appellate court, which appeared skeptical of Judge Arthur Engoron’s verdict, which was handed down on summary judgment without convening a jury.Ms. Bondi, who when she swore her oath in the Oval Office earlier this week promised to make Mr. Trump “proud,” does not in her memo mention the criminal racketeering case brought against Mr. Trump and 18 others by the district attorney of Georgia’s Fulton County, Fani Willis. The prosecutor has been disqualified from the case on account of her secret romance with her special prosecutor, but her charges still stand.A federal judge this week ruled in response to a Freedom of Information request that the DOJ is obligated to disclose by February 21 any correspondence in its possession between Mr. Smith and Ms. Willis. Ms. Bondi appears unlikely to appeal that ruling, given that such disclosures could soon find their way to the Resolute desk.

Pam Bondi Forms Squad To Take on Jack Smith and Letitia James as She Probes Their Pursuits of Trump

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