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When Trump ran into trouble during his first term, he reportedly cried out, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?!” Alas, his favorite thug-fixer-lawyer had been dead since 1986 (having perished just six weeks after he was disbarred for fraud). Nobody in Trump’s embattled orbit was qualified to pick up the torch and run with Cohn’s credo, which, was quite simple: If they hit ya hard, hit ‘em back twice as hard. Back in the day, Trump told the press, “If you need someone to get vicious toward an opponent, you get Roy.”
But the convicted criminal has lucked out again. Now he has Cohn 2.0, courtesy of slavish supplicant Pam Bondi — who, when she’s not gazing adoringly at her sun god, is systematically destroying the credibility of the Justice Department, converting it into a Trump defense firm, and spitting venom at anyone with the temerity to ask adversarial queries.
What we witnessed the other day — when she stormed Capitol Hill — would likely live in infamy if not for the fact that the news cycle churns so quickly, fueled seemingly each hour by new horrors, hurling whatever just happened onto the ash heap of amnesia. But I can’t let it go, not just yet.
For starters, however, it’s important to remember why Bondi got the gig as America’s top legal eagle. Her loyalty pact with Trump, forged in scandal (naturally), was sealed way back in 2013. As Florida’s attorney general, Bondi was deciding whether to join a class action lawsuit, filed in New York, against phony Trump University; dozens of bilked Florida suckers were demanding justice. But that’s when the Donald J. Trump foundation, a nonprofit charity, swung into action. It sent a $25,000 campaign contribution to a political group with ties to Bondi. (The Trump donation was illegal — shocking! — because nonprofits are barred by the IRS from giving money to political campaigns.) Plus, Bondi herself solicited that donation. And shortly thereafter, she announced she would not join the class action suit. Trump then denied that he’d try to buy Bondi for 25 grand, Bondi denied there was any quid quo pro, but, as we all know, denials like those have less value than a degree from Trump University.
Anyway, she showed up the other day in front of a Senate oversight committee, seething in anger at the very idea that anyone in the legislative branch would dare exercise the constitutional right of oversight. Senators do that as part of their duty to check and balance the executive branch and report to the American people. But that means nothing to Bondi (checks and balances are quaint relics of a bygone 235-year era), because Bondi basically behaves and auditions for an audience of One.
Take, for instance, her exchange with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. He said: “There’s been public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump with half-naked young women. Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of Jeffrey Epstein’s safe, or premises or otherwise? Have you seen any such things?”
Bondi tried the Roy Cohn treatment: “Senator, you sit here and you make salacious remarks, once again trying to slander President Trump, left and right, when you’re the one who was taking money from Epstein’s closest confidants. I believe, I could be wrong, correct me, Reid Hoffman …Yet, you’re grilling me on President Trump, some photograph with Epstein? Come on.”
It’s a good thing she said “I could be wrong,” because there’s no evidence that anyone named Reid Hoffman or Reed Hoffman has ever donated anything to Whitehouse’s Senate campaigns. But she needed some kind of Cohnesque con, given the sensitivity of the Epstein scandal, given the fact that she has shut down release of the files, and given the fact that, as Florida attorney general from 2011 to 2019, she declined to prosecute Epstein after he got a slap-on-the-wrist sweetheart plea deal from the feds in 2007.
During the Senate hearing, she also did her Cohn thing during an exchange with Senator Richard Blumenthal: “I cannot believe that you would accuse me of impropriety when you lied about your military service … You lied. How dare you. I’m a career prosecutor. Don’t you ever challenge my integrity.”
Blumenthal, a U.S. Marines reservist for six years, said on the stump in 2008 that he’d served “in Vietnam.” He acknowledged that falsehood and apologized for it … 15 years ago. Apparently Blumenthal’s lie in 2008 carries more weight with Bondi than the 30,573 lies that her bone-spurs client uttered during his first term alone.
But the best moment was when Senator Adam Schiff sought to sum things up: “These are just some of the questions you refuse to answer, or have answered with personal attacks on members of this committee...You were asked who or what role you may have played, or who played the role in asking that Trump’s name be flagged in any of the Epstein documents gathered by the FBI. You refuse to answer that question … You were asked, did career prosecutors find insufficient evidence to charge (ex-FBI director and Trump foe) James Comey. You refused to answer that question…You were asked, did you discuss indicting James Comey with the president. You refused to answer that question … You were asked whether you support a restoration fund for violent insurrections, insurrections to attack the Capitol on January 6th. Refuses to answer that question. You were asked whether you were firing career professionals, career prosecutors just because they worked on January 6th investigations. You refused to answer that question. You were asked by my California colleague whether you believe (Trump) officials, like immigration officials, have to abide by court orders. You wouldn’t even answer that question.”
Bondi couldn’t take it. Midway through Schiff’s summation, she spewed some snark: “Do you have a law degree, Senator Schiff?”
Wow. Does this Trump gal do her research, or what? Schiff graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, clerked for a federal judge, served six years as an assistant U.S. attorney, and prosecuted (among many others) an ex-FBI agent who’d spied for Russia.
It’s no wonder that 280 former Justice officials have signed a letter demanding the Congress demand more oversight of Bondi, not less. It needs to be exercised “far more vigorously.” The letter says that 5,000 public servants have exited DOJ since Bondi began her reign, taking steps that have already proved ‘“catastrophic for the nation.”
I’d love to believe that Bondi’s mockery of Senate oversight will backfire. Terry Moran, the ex-ABC reporter, clearly harbors such a hope. On his Substack, he references “Normal people. Remember them? Well, we’re still out here, you and me and tens of millions more … Normal, decent people don’t want what Pam Bondi showed them … Americans haven’t changed that much, for all our desperate political disagreements. We are still a decent, middle-class, middle-temperament, middle-of-the-road nation.”
But if that’s true, why did it re-hire a convicted criminal and saddle us with the second coming of Roy Cohn? And even if the normal and the decent wake up in sufficient numbers to protest what has happened to this country, what evidence is there that the authoritarians in power will care?
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist, alumni of the Philadelphia Inquirer and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.substack.com and is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Email dickpolman7@gmail.com.
