Bondi’s not-so-long goodbye

[cartoon id="306289"] Last week, Pam Bondi became the latest Trump official to bite the political dust. Such news was hardly surprising. It was common knowledge the president was intensely dissatisfied with Bondi, resenting her inability to prosecute his political enemies successfully and frustrated she was unable to contain the endemic frenzy that engulfed the Epstein scandal. He also felt psychotically sobered by her unconvincing performative antics on television and in front of Congress. Before her long-overdue termination, Bondi arrogantly indulged in highly reductive behavior that publicly betrayed her incompetence and lack of qualifications to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcer. In September 2025, shortly after Charlie Kirk’s death, she appeared on the Katie Miller Podcast declaring that federal law enforcement would “go after” Americans for hate speech. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech,” However, the First Amendment contains no hate-speech exception. Mind you, this was not some random, disgruntled, plain Jane or average Joe spewing such alarming rhetoric. These were the exact words of the attorney general of the United States, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the nation. After an intense backlash, Bondi “clarified” her remarks, arguing she was referring solely to “hate speech,” which she would prosecute if it included “calls to violence.” It was a lame attempt at rhetorical cleanup that inspired little confidence and left much to be desired. During her stormy tenure, Bondi’s Justice Department devolved into a tool for the president’s perverse political agenda. Specifically, Trump tasked Bondi with weaponizing the department against his longtime antagonists. Due to scant evidence of criminality, the Justice Department failed to secure indictments or convictions of James Comey, John Bolton, Adam Schiff, Letitia James, John Brennan, Jerome Powell, and other of the president’s detractors. Failure aside, Bondi successfully devitalized the department, which is currently a fraction of its former self. She dismantled the civil rights division, an imperative sector of government that ardently and earnestly worked to enforce equal rights, voting rights, and antidiscrimination law. Incredulously, every attorney involved in prior criminal investigations of Trump was fired, resigned, or retired. Fully 6,000 lawyers resigned rather than work toward her untoward objectives. Trump’s resentment at Bondi’s fumbling of the ongoing Epstein scandal elucidates how the issue cryptically plagues his administration. Not long after her swearing in as attorney general, Bondi appeared on Fox News and said the Epstein files were “sitting on my desk.” A few months later, the Justice Department announced that it would not be releasing any more information, citing the need to protect victims and denying there was a “client list.” Not surprisingly, such a turnabout demoralized more than a few conspiracy theory-addicted MAGA supporters, who steadfastly believed that the files contained ample evidence that numerous Democratic leaders were closet pedophiles. Agitated by right-wing social influencers, Trump’s diehard fans convinced themselves releasing such files would result in unprecedented arrests of Democrats and possibly even result in the entire party’s political nullification. Interestingly, these same folks decided to adopt a “hear no evil, see no evil, fear no evil” stance regarding the indisputable photos and video evidence that Trump was Epstein’s close friend for years, and that the commonality these two men shared was an astonishing number of credible sexual assault accusations. One can only speculate why Bondi early on in her position as attorney general decided to announce on Fox News that she had the Epstein files in her possession and teased that they included the rumored “client list” that conspiracists fantasized contained all the radical Democrats they wanted prosecuted and incarcerated. The truth is (or was) that she was well aware that she never intended to release any new information on the case. In reality, she hoodwinked the conspiracists by providing binders labeled “Epstein files” that were nothing more than a collage of evidence already available in the public domain. For Bondi, this was her personal waterloo. The more she worked to diminish the Epstein controversy, the more public interest grew. Through the combination of continuous disclosures, congressional subpoenas and eventual rulings demanding the documents’ release, the American public was able to witness some of the seedy and sordid material (much of it implicating Trump) that the former attorney general so fiercely tried to obscure. Her dismissal is some minute degree of justice. Pam Bondi is now no longer immune from potential prosecution. There is no doubt that Congress will compel her to testify as a private citizen. Her sinister efforts to weaponize the Justice Department perversely at Trump’s behest was nothing short of disturbing and abominable. - Copyright 2026 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.