Justice, Upside Down

By Kevin D. Williamson

Monday, April 06, 2026

 

What should a self-respecting republic do with a figure such as Pam Bondi, assuming that horse-whipping is, for whatever strange reason, off the table?

 

Bondi, lately the attorney general of these United States, is an exemplary specimen of the sort of people who thrive in Donald Trump’s orbit: She is in a profound moral sense a criminal, but we lack an appropriate law under which to prosecute her.

 

Bondi’s 14-month career at the Department of Justice was, as a matter of her official duties, a crime spree. Her legacy is that she used the DOJ to launch a series of pretextual criminal investigations and prosecutions targeting the president’s political enemies, even when there was not the hint of an actual legal case to be made against them. Those targeted by Bondi’s DOJ as a matter of political vendetta include: Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, all of Minnesota; Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey; St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her; Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell; Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook; Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan; Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado; Rep. Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire; Reps. Chrissy Houlahan and Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania; Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona; Sen. Adam Schiff of California; former FBI Director James Comey; former CIA Director John Brennan; Attorney General Letitia James of New York. (The prosecution of former National Security Adviser John Bolton, no less political and pretextual where Bondi was concerned, is more complicated in that it is not solely the work of the Trump administration.)

 

That is quite a list—other than printing up a bunch of fake “Epstein files” binders, Bondi seems to have done very little with her time in office other than abuse the awesome powers of the DOJ to abuse, harass, and conduct retribution against the president’s political enemies.

 

Though vexing in this situation, it probably is for the best that we do not have a law under which the prosecution of Pam Bondi would be convenient—if Bondi’s career as attorney general shows us anything at all, it is that in our current debased political environment the DOJ could not be entrusted with a statute containing provisions flexible enough to treat as a criminal matter such abuses of power as Bondi’s. A law meant to curtail such abuses of power would, ironically, almost certainly facilitate new ones. Bondi is licensed in Florida, where she served as attorney general, and Florida law contemplates disbarment in light of a lawyer’s “cumulative misconduct” and permits permanent disbarment in cases “where an attorney’s conduct indicates he or she engages in a persistent course of unrepentant and egregious misconduct and is beyond redemption.”

 

Having recently celebrated the Resurrection, I do not believe that a human being is “beyond redemption” as a spiritual matter. But as to the question of whether a lawyer or a government officer is beyond redemption: If Pam Bondi has not engaged “in a persistent course of unrepentant and egregious misconduct,” then who has?

 

In his famous denunciation of the Roman aristocrat Catiline, who plotted a coup d’etat after losing an election (sound familiar?), Cicero famously thundered:

 

Oh, the times! Oh, the morals! The senate knows what is happening. The consul sees it—yet he lives. Lives? Not only that, he even comes to the senate to participate in the public business, and to mark each of us for assassination. We brave men think that we are doing enough for the republic if only we avoid getting ourselves murdered.

 

Cicero, supported by the conservative senator Cato the Younger, persuaded the senate to endorse summary execution for five of Catiline’s coconspirators, who were quickly put to death, an offense against Roman law and norms for which Cicero himself would later face a brief exile. The argument offered in favor of execution without trial was much like the one Romans made for crucifixion—that it would have a deterrent effect. And, in the case of the Catilinarian conspiracy, it worked: Catiline had raised a force to wage war on the republic and seize the consulship, but many of his dispirited allies deserted him before the battle—which did not last long and which Catiline did not survive, which probably was the best thing for him: Rome was pretty hard on insurrectionists, a fact that probably should be of interest to the illiterate sentimentalists attracted to the slogan “RETVRN.” That QAnon Shaman guy got all weepy about not having organic food in the lockup—imagine how he’d have whined about being shoved off the Tarpeian Rock.

 

Speaking of which: In addition to her other noncriminal crimes against the state, Bondi did not make a peep about Trump’s mass pardon of the January 6 insurrectionists and instead oversaw a DOJ purge in which the prosecutors who had worked on January 6-related cases—or on cases related to the actual crimes of Donald Trump and his lackeys in the first administration—were driven out. To protect the guilty and persecute the ... “innocent” is a strong word for Washington, but you know what I mean—that is not justice. It is the inversion of justice, and Pam Bondi was instrumental in turning the Department of Justice upside down.

 

Bondi, like many members of the Trump administration, could frequently be seen wearing a cross on a chain around her neck. She ought to think on that cross. Her career may be yesterday’s news, but there is news that stays news:

 

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! ...  Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!

 

And Furthermore ...

 

One is tempted here to take the Lord’s name in vain: J.D. Vance, the George Babbitt of Elmer Gantrys, is about to publish a book about Christian conversion. Vance is, of course, the nation’s leading expert on conversion—he can and will convert himself into anything you like, for a price. Even man-of-many-faces Sohrab Ahmari must look at Vance from time to time and think:

 

“Dude.”

 

St. Thomas More—I mean the stage character, not the historical figure—knew the score:

 

... in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust, and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice, and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all.

 

We have to choose, to be human at all. Vance has chosen something else: to be all things to all cretins.

 

Who rises and who falls in this world may be part of some divine plan, although I have some doubts about that. (“God is a kid with an ant farm.”) Vance, who would sell his beloved Mamaw into white slavery if it suited his ambition, makes me think of Robert Browning’s narrator in “Porphyria’s Lover,” who has just murdered a young woman and sits embracing her corpse, pleased to have gotten away with the crime:

 

And thus we sit together now,

 

 And all night long we have not stirred,

 

And yet God has not said a word!

 

Economics for English Majors

 

Trump’s budget proposal is, of course, idiotic and dishonest. From the Wall Street Journal:

 

The budget calls for a 42% increase in defense spending and a 10% reduction in nondefense spending, taking particular aim at renewable-energy programs, refugee resettlement funding and housing initiatives the administration deems “woke.” The plan emphasizes missile defense and beautification in Washington, D.C., while shrinking funding for environmental-justice initiatives and electric-vehicle charging.

 

“Beautification in Washington” means Trump building more monuments to himself,  but set that aside for a second. Purely as a thought exercise, let us entertain the notion: Increasing defense spending by 42 percent while cutting non-defense spending by 10 percent would, in fact, represent a decrease in overall federal spending, since 42 percent of 13 percent (current defense spending) is a smaller number than 10 percent of 87 percent (non-defense spending). Given that almost all non-defense spending is entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) and interest on the debt (a non-optional outlay), best of luck coming up with a way to cut 10 percent out of non-defense spending while only gutting “woke” and “green” stuff. All education, training, employment, social services, and transportation spending combined comes out to about 4 percent of federal spending. A note here to my progressive friends who insist that we’d be fiscally fine if we returned to Eisenhower-era top tax rates of 90-odd percent: In spite of the on-paper rates, overall federal taxes in the Eisenhower years were a little bit lower than they have been in recent years (a little less than 17 percent of GDP in 1957, a little more than 17 percent in 2025, almost 19 percent in 2022), while Trump’s proposal to boost military spending while cutting domestic spending would be a step back in the direction of Eisenhower-era spending priorities. In the 1950s, defense spending accounted for nearly 60 percent of federal outlays, as opposed to the current level of about 13 percent. In the earlier part of the Eisenhower administration, the defense/social-spending split was more like 80/20. (Go ahead and dig inhere.) If you think that is what federal spending should look like—be careful what you wish for, because Trump may try to give it to you.

 

Words About Words

 

A New York Times headline wonders: Could there be “A North American Treaty Organization without America?” What would that even mean?

 

I come bearing good news for the anxious Times copy editors: There will never be a North American Treaty Organization without America! In fact, there is no such thing as the North American Treaty Organization. NATO has 32 members, 30 of which are in Europe and two of which are in North America, and it is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

 

I also have some bad news:

 

 

And Furtherermore ...

 

The Huffington Post, which still exists, reports: “Irritable Male Syndrome (IMS) Is An Actual Condition — And It Could Explain A Lot.”

 

About that:

 

Get off my lawn.

 

And Furthererermore ...

 

I came across an interesting name, one belonging to a lawyer for the Democracy Defenders Fund who was quoted this week in a New York Times article. And what a name:  Taryn Wilgus Null, which sounds like it should belong to a character in a book with a dragon on the cover and a subtitle advertising it as “Part 17 in the Wintersbane Saga” or something like that. It is an excellent name. As a boring ol’ “Kevin,” I am envious.