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Pam Bondi Needs an Intervention

19 7
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When Christopher Moltisanti walks into the dingy apartment and sees a gathering of concerned family, friends, and professional colleagues, he wants no part of the impending intervention. The mafia protégé, played unforgettably by Michael Imperioli in HBO’s The Sopranos, spins around to leave — until he’s ordered back in by the boss, Tony Soprano. The assembled gangsters and hangers-on take turns imploring Moltisanti to kick his self-destructive habits. Paulie Walnuts cuts to the chase: “I don’t write nothin’ down, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. You’re weak, you’re out of control, and you’ve become an embarrassment to yourself and everybody else.”

It’s time for the Pam Bondi intervention.

I doubt that any of the top political appointees at the Justice Department have the chops or guts necessary to tell the attorney general that she’s fighting a losing cause with a series of doomed, presidentially decreed payback prosecutions. But she’d be well advised to heed the unmistakable message that has been sent by judges, grand juries, and DOJ alumni alike: The cases are failing and doomed to fail further, and she’s doing irreparable institutional harm to the Justice Department.

We’re familiar with the roll call of names President Donald Trump yearns to see on the other side of the “v.” in federal prosecutions brought by Bondi’s Justice Department. Former FBI director James Comey and current New York attorney general Letitia James have already been charged, and those cases have backfired, fast and hard (and predictably). Last month, a federal judge threw out both indictments because the Justice Department had improperly installed prosecutorial neophyte Lindsey Halligan as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The joint dismissals were a sharp rebuke of the Justice Department — and then Bondi made it worse still.

Two weeks ago, the DOJ tried to........

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