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Trump’s Base Wants Accountability—So What Happened at Pam Bondi’s DOJ?

Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of "The Victor Davis Hanson Show." His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at [email protected].

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. 

JACK FOWLER: Pam Bondi has been given the boot as attorney general. Do you have any thoughts on that, Victor?  

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Well. I don’t know the intricacies. She’s very pleasant. She’s very close. She’s a very good, nice person. She had a good record in Florida, but she came in late because of the Matt Gaetz misadventure. 

And so they needed somebody and I think Trump expected two major task forces for her. One was fraud.  

Elon Musk said that from the very beginning when they were doing the DOGE, and the DOGE, I thought there would be indictments, you know, left and right from what they found out. And there haven’t been.  

So the very idea that J.D. Vance … he’s a lawyer and that’s really good, but he’s not an attorney in the sense of a prosecutor. The fact that he’s leading a commission and it’s not a Senate, like a Harry Truman investigation during World War II, but that shows you, there hasn’t been people at DOJ. 

There should be a very high, famous prosecutor who should be doing that. I’m gonna have a federal task force on fraud. We give this money to the states and that hasn’t happened.  

And then the other thing is all the Left says, “Well, you can’t conflate the AG and the president. They have to have a firewall. How dare you?”  Come on. Who do you think Bobby Kennedy was? He was the attorney general when John Kennedy [was president]. You’ve seen those pictures about every five minutes. They’re walking together. He didn’t do anything unless John Kennedy [was involved]. 

Who do you think John Mitchell was? He was the bond lawyer for Richard Nixon. Who do you think Eric Holder was? Why do you think that he said he was the wingman? The wingman of Barack Obama? Why do you think he defiantly refused a congressional subpoena? And he knew he had complete exemption in a way that Steve Bannon, for example, or Peter Navarro didn’t, because he knew what Obama would say.He would back him.  

So. They needed somebody, what I’m getting at, independent, but to investigate the misuse of the federal government to go after people. And people are getting frustrated.  

They didn’t do anything with the IRS under Obama that went after targeted groups on their political affiliations, right before an election. 

They didn’t do anything for Operation Crossfire Hurricane. They didn’t do anything for [James] Clapper and [John] Brennan lying under oath. 

If anybody believes that James Comey, for 245 times, an FBI director said he didn’t remember or didn’t know while under oath, and that’s not lying? 

They should have indicted Joe Biden’s ghost writer when he said to Robert Hur, “I just erased that subpoenaed oral transcript. I was worried about hacking, so I just took it upon myself to destroy federal evidence.”  When they were doing the [Robert] Mueller investigation, they were missing all sorts of FBI phones. Remember that? They turned them over, and they said, “Oh, I don’t know. Somebody erased them.” 

And when Andrew McCabe said, “Don’t worry. He’s not going to be elected. We need an insurance policy.” They had it all. 

John Durham was a very good guy, and he was very thorough, but it was just a nothingburger. And so, people got really frustrated. They got really frustrated when Fani Willis got up in that stand and lied her head off that, “Oh, it’s a black thing that I use cash. How dare you suggest they should have receipts.” 

Or she used federal monies for at-risk use to go after Trump, or that crazy Alvin Bragg shoehorning or bootstrapping or whatever you want to call it, a minor federal offense into a state mega felony. It wasn’t even an offense. 

So what I’m getting at, there were all these indiscretions and nobody in the Justice Department ever seriously did anything about them.  

And yet, when there were Democrats in power, my gosh. I’m not asking the Republicans to appoint a Fani Willis, or an Alvin Bragg or a Jack Smith or Letitia James, but my gosh. 

I think people get very frustrated, Jack, because they saw all of that lawfare—get him off the ballot, raid his home. They’re not asking for that. They’re not saying we should be like that, but what they’re saying is these Democrats did all that. 

It was all illegal. It was all politically inspired. We’re not asking to go down to their level. We’re just asking to hold the people who did something wrong accountable. And we are not doing that at this time. We’re not doing that.  

The Democrats said when we get back in power, hello. I’m Susan Rice. We’re gonna go after all of you. I’m James Carville, and I just say you better be careful because as soon as you get back in there, we’re gonna get the Trump family.

We’re gonna get the Trump family spouses. 

FOWLER: And Victor, if I may, a backdrop to this, too. It’s not Bondi’s fault, but you see these judges in Minnesota who are giving these pathetically tiny sentences to these terrible fraudsters. 

How come these people are getting away with it? 

HANSON: Yeah, and I think you’re absolutely right. I think sometimes the administration’s not communicating well. There were two big issues. They weren’t the biggest, but they were big issues when he got reelected. 

One was, are we going to finish the wall? And the second is, why don’t we, you know … Leonard Leo, he had a falling out with Trump and all the problems he’s had. 

He’s gone off in a strange direction, I guess. But he did get these people appointed. 

So why have we, I don’t know. I have no idea whether we have the same amount, fewer amount. The Democratic opposition is more rabid than the first. I don’t know. 

But it does seem like we’re not getting all of these federal judge billets filled quickly with conservatives, and time is running out because if they lose, they’re never gonna confirm them. 

They could be Thomas Jefferson, and they wouldn’t confirm. 

So we need to get the judges appointed, audited, confirmed, and we need the wall all the way to the canyons of East Texas, the whole thing.  

It’s 2,000 miles. I guess there’s 400 or 500 miles that the terrain makes it impossible. But we should then cover that with sophisticated electronic surveillance, et cetera, et cetera, and then just build this wall all the way. And we’re not doing it. 

At least we’re not being told we’re doing it. That would help people during the midterm to be apprised of that. 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

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