Harry Litman - Bondi Shows How It's Not Done
In her press conference Friday announcing the unsealing of Department of Justice criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Attorney General Pam Bondi put on a clinic—in how to make such announcements improperly.
Bondi overreached grotesquely, in ways that likely violated DOJ, bar association, and federal guidelines, and possibly the U.S. Constitution as well. In her excess of zeal, she tarred Abrego Garcia with external allegations and may well have undermined the prospects for conviction.
This is not Bondi’s first flagrant departure from appropriate conduct in informing the public about DOJ charges. It’s become her MO to throw around inflammatory charges against defendants combined with fulsome and legally irrelevant praise of President Trump.
She should, and likely does, know better. In other times, the Department’s disciplinary processes would come down hard on her. But taking a page from her patron, she has also neutered norms and rules designed to rein in abuses. For former DOJers, it’s stunning and deeply disheartening to see the abuses come from the very top, and to witness a kind of bloodthirst for conviction replace the Department’s deep institutional allegiance to the presumption of innocence.
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/bondi-shows-how-its-not-done
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