Tag: attorney general
US Attorney General Pam Bondi

Pam 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 M.O. 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 DOJ staffers, 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.

The presumption of innocence is a cornerstone not just of American law but of nearly all evolved criminal justice systems. It is a counterweight to the enormous power of the state and a bulwark against the prospect that the government could use the criminal law to punish opponents and suppress dissent. The idea is encapsulated in the famous maxim of the foundational legal expositor William Blackstone: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

The presumption of innocence requires that prosecutors present their evidence in a court of law according to rules of evidence and other legal safeguards, including the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It follows that in publicly announcing charges against a defendant—which are not evidence but mere allegations—a prosecutor must restrict herself to the information set out in the grand jury indictment or other charging document, and must scrupulously characterize that information as government contentions, not proof.

That limitation, which is a matter of second nature to a seasoned prosecutor, gives rise to several independent strictures. Violating them potentially carries administrative, disciplinary, judicial, and even criminal penalties.

Among the most serious is the prohibition in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (formally enacted by the Supreme Court with congressional oversight) on public disclosure of “matters occurring before the grand jury.” Once a grand jury has returned an indictment, the set of allegations in that document becomes public, and so a prosecutor may disclose those allegations. But by the same token, she may disclose only those allegations and must make it clear that they are simply allegations and that a defendant retains the presumption of innocence.

Then there are Department of Justice restrictions on media statements in the Justice Manual. These specify, among other things, that a prosecutor may only confirm basic public facts, such as court dates, and can never offer public statements about the strength of the evidence, character of the accused, or likelihood of conviction.

Departures from these DOJ guidelines are subject to discipline by the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates misconduct and makes findings that can lead to various recommended sanctions, including termination.

There are also separate ethical rules administered by state bar authorities that forbid lawyers from making out-of-court statements that present a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing a proceeding. Those are typically part of state-specific regulatory systems of ethical restrictions. In Florida, where Attorney General Bondi holds her bar license, these include a special requirement that a “Florida prosecutor must refrain from making statements that ‘heighten public condemnation of the accused’ unless necessary to inform the public and serve a legitimate law enforcement purpose.”

Finally, the prohibition on public commentary outside the four corners of the indictment has a constitutional dimension. Courts have suppressed evidence and even reversed criminal convictions for misconduct that violates a defendant’s right to the presumption of innocence—for example, improperly influencing the jury pool.

The transgression, and thus the prospect of court sanction, is greater when the inflammatory statement comes from a high-level government official. As the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals put it in a case growing out of Hurricane Katrina: “When statements come from high-level government officials such as a United States Attorney, they are more likely to be taken seriously by the press and the public and thus more likely to influence public opinion—and potentially, the jury pool.”

The bottom line, ingrained in the mindset of experienced prosecutors, is straightforward: when announcing criminal charges, stick scrupulously to the four corners of the indictment; emphasize that they are allegations and the defendant is presumed innocent; and never malign the defendant with extraneous incendiary characterizations—for example, by asserting, as AG Bondi did on Fox News in discussing the charges against state court judge Hannah Duggan, that she must be “deranged.”

In this case, the indictment itself—and in particular the conspiracy charge—gave Bondi plenty of material to paint Abrego Garcia in the most sinister terms.

The indictment has a central story, and it's one we've known about for some time. In 2022, Abrego Garcia was stopped by state troopers in Tennessee. He was driving a Suburban and there were nine other passengers, all Hispanic males, in the car with him. He told police that he was transporting the nine from one job site to another. The officers, who recorded the episode on their body cameras, suspected that he might have been transporting undocumented aliens, but they opted to let him go with a warning about an expired license.

That story is the dramatic centerpiece—really the only detailed drama—in the indictment. The rest of the document is cursory and elliptical. But it seeks to paint a picture of Abrego Garcia's criminal conduct that goes very far beyond—in time and kinds of crimes—the traffic stop.

The key is the government’s use of a conspiracy charge. Conspiracy law is a very powerful tool for prosecutors because it provides for liability among all conspirators for the criminal conduct of each of them. It does, however, require the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant agreed to participate in the conspiracy.

Thus, perhaps the key allegation in the whole indictment is in paragraphs 9–10, alleging that Abrego Garcia joined a 10-year conspiracy (from about 2016 to about 2025) to transport aliens within the United States.

That is the linchpin that lets the government load up the indictment with allegations of conduct from unidentified conspirators (CC-1 to CC-6 in the indictment). Some of the allegations have nothing to do with Abrego Garcia; others have nothing to do with the identified goal of the conspiracy.

Paragraph 26 alleges that CC-6 was involved in the killing of more than 50 migrants when the trailer they were in overturned in Mexico. Paragraphs 19–20 detail the money laundering part of the operation by CCs 3, 4, and 5. There is no mention of Abrego Garcia.

Use of conspiracy law to expand a defendant’s liability is fair game. But it depends on proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Abrego Garcia agreed to join the conspiracy. That may prove tricky. The indictment just states—without elaboration—that Abrego Garcia agreed with CC-1 to “work together to transport undocumented aliens for profit and private financial gain.”

The story, however, looks more complicated than that. According to news reports, CC-1 is a man named Jose Hernandez-Reyes, who is serving a 30-month sentence in Alabama for transporting undocumented migrants. He has been granted limited immunity to cooperate against Abrego Garcia. He supposedly told federal officers who visited him in April that he ran a Baltimore-based taxi service for transporting migrants and that he hired Abrego Garcia “on multiple occasions” to do the driving.

That hardly seems like a clear demonstration that Abrego Garcia agreed to join the overall criminal enterprise. It certainly leaves room for argument that he's more like a hired hand who helped out on multiple occasions.

We know that the chief of the criminal division in the Nashville U.S. Attorney's office where the case was brought resigned over the decision to charge Abrego Garcia. He was a career prosecutor who had served for 15 years. That sort of resignation is, first, incredibly rare—or was before the Bondi era—and second, an indication of something possibly very abnormal in the case approval process. Perhaps it was the decision to treat Abrego Garcia as a mastermind leader of the conspiracy with Hernandez-Reyes, rather than an occasional driver.

The bottom line, though, is that the concrete and detailed story of the Tennessee stop stands very far apart from the balance of the indictment, which is fairly flimsy and conclusory. It’s the big leg up of the conspiracy charge that enables the government to use the traffic stop to portray Abrego Garcia as a central player in a longstanding scheme of unlawful transportation of migrants—with stray allegations of gun-running, drugs, and sexual abuse thrown in.

Bondi was asked at the press conference why, since the grand jury had uncovered all the additional information involving guns, drugs, and sexual assault, the government didn’t charge Abrego Garcia with those crimes. This was her complete response: “We were clear to say that he is charged with very serious charges of alien smuggling, and again, there were children involved in that. You know—human trafficking, not only in our country but in our world, is very, very real. It’s very dangerous.”

In his famous speech, “The Federal Prosecutor,” Attorney General (and later Associate Justice) Robert Jackson wrote, “While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst. The federal prosecutor can strike hard blows, but he is not at liberty to strike foul ones.”

The conspiracy charges against Abrego Garcia strike a hard blow—though, as noted, they may result in problems of proof for the prosecution. But the Attorney General’s remarks at her triumphant, pugnacious press conference repeatedly struck foul ones.

For starters, Bondi leveled wildly inflammatory charges against Abrego Garcia that strayed far from the four corners of the indictment. She asserted that the grand jury found that Abrego Garcia was a full-time smuggler of migrants, not a contractor (“They found that this was his full-time job.”). She said that he made over 100 trips and transported over 1,000 migrants. (Notice these allegations seem to contradict the account of Hernandez-Reyes, who told the feds that Abrego Garcia had driven loads of migrants “on multiple occasions.”) She told the press that the grand jury found that Abrego Garcia solicited nude photographs and videos of minors. She alleged that he had played a role in the murder of a rival gang member’s mother.

The indictment includes not a word about any of these incendiary allegations that indeed do make Abrego Garcia seem like an incorrigible criminal and one of the “worst of the worst,” as Trump has put it. In fact, Bondi’s repeated assertions about what the grand jury “found” are bizarre. Grand juries don’t submit ancillary findings in support of their indictments. All their allegations are contained within the indictment (which, typically, prosecutors draft).

And to the extent Bondi was relying on evidence that the grand jury heard but that did not wind up in the indictment, she would be revealing confidential grand jury information in violation of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. That is the sort of serious transgression that typically results in discipline of the attorney and potential dismissal of the case.

Bondi further peppered her comments with chest-thumping and hammy lines that again just have no place in a media briefing on a federal indictment. She dramatically proclaimed that Abrego Garcia had “traded the innocence of minor children for profit,” whatever that means. When asked what had changed since authorities declined to charge Abrego Garcia for the 2022 traffic stop, she answered, “What has changed since then is Donald Trump is now President of the United States and our borders are again secure,” which manages to be improperly political, nonresponsive, and bananas all at once.

She then asserted that the police work on the Abrego Garcia case had “stopped this international smuggling ring,” but Hernandez-Reyes has been in federal custody since April 8, after being picked up by Border Patrol agents on an unrelated charge. She came back repeatedly to the “disturbing” fact that there were children involved, and detoured to an unrelated case in which MS-13 allegedly groomed young children to be gang members. She said that Abrego Garcia not only had joined the conspiracy but played a “significant” role in it.

Bondi has regularly violated legal, ethical, and internal requirements in her public remarks about federal charges. But the Abrego Garcia press conference reads like an issue-spotter ethics exam for young prosecutors. Virtually every sentence contains one or more improprieties. Any potential juror that heard it, not to mention the public as a whole, would have to have been left with a sinister picture of Abrego Garcia as one of the “worst of the worst” that seems flatly discordant with the available evidence and bears little relation to the actual allegations in the indictment. It’s a truly disgraceful performance.

It’s not hard to discern Bondi’s motivation for splattering mud all over Abrego Garcia. He was the first migrant whom the Trump administration had to admit it had deported by mistake. His case has been the hottest flashpoint in a series of controversial deportations, and he has become the poster child for the Administration’s fecklessness and indifference to its own constitutional violations.

When faced with court orders to return him to the United States, the administration trotted out a series of lousy legal arguments and implausible factual accounts to try to evade their constitutional responsibility to bring him back. But they were only digging an ever-deeper hole for themselves, both in the courts and in public opinion, and their refusal to facilitate his return was becoming untenable.

The government insisted that it couldn’t and wouldn’t bring Abrego Garcia home so many times, that finally throwing in the towel was an embarrassment. The criminal charges are a face-saving measure, and the more they can paint Abrego Garcia as a savage monster, the more they can deflect attention from their own lawlessness and portray Trump as a strongman savior.

If this case goes to trial, I think it's likely that the government’s proof will not match its allegations, starting with Abrego Garcia’s supposed joining of the conspiracy. The cross-examinations of CC-1 and CC-2 figure to be bruising. The defense also has a strong story to tell of vindictive and politicized prosecution, and various ways to make hay of Bondi’s improper public comments.

For those reasons, I think the administration is likely to play hardball and bring all leverage it can to induce Abrego Garcia to plead guilty, probably to the one substantive count based on the 2022 traffic stop. They weren’t able to disappear him permanently into CECOT, but keeping his story—which is mainly a story of governmental misconduct and malice—from coming out would be the next best thing for the Administration. It would prevent Abrego Garcia and the justice system from turning the mirror on the Administration’s skein of overreach, arrogance, and evasion since March 15, when they shipped him to El Salvador by mistake. They would be able to bury the whole ugly mess, keep the most important parts of the story from coming to light, and preempt any efforts to hold the government accountable. That’s a foul blow to democracy.

Harry Litman is a former United States Attorney and the executive producer and host of the Talking Feds podcast. He has taught law at UCLA, Berkeley, and Georgetown and served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton Administration. Please consider subscribing to Talking Feds on Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

Shameless Grandstanding: Bondi And Patel Overreach In Feeble Case Against Judge

Shameless Grandstanding: Bondi And Patel Overreach In Feeble Case Against Judge

When word broke on Friday about the arrest of a sitting Wisconsin state court judge, Hannah Dugan, on charges of obstructing the arrest of an illegal immigrant, my immediate reaction on Bluesky was “Whoa. Feels like massive overreaching.”

Having now reviewed the charging documents and some accounts of colleagues, my off-the-cuff assessment stands. The arrest of Judge Dugan was a long stretch that is hard to square with the principles of federal prosecution which govern the decision whether to charge every federal case.

A perusal of the facts, as laid out in the affidavit of an FBI agent accompanying the criminal complaint, easily isolates the weak spot in the case.

The six-agent team that had gathered in Milwaukee County Circuit Court to arrest Eduardo Flores Ruiz, who was appearing in Judge Dugan's courtroom on domestic violence charges, had not worked out a protocol for Ruiz's arrest. Dugan was angry when she learned of their presence and demanded that they speak with the chief judge. She then returned to her courtroom, adjourned Ruiz’s case, and directed him to leave through the jury door.

Although the key detail is obfuscated in the FBI affidavit, the jury door led directly back to the same public hallway, where one agent was waiting as Ruiz and his counsel emerged. (The others were conferring with the Chief Judge.) The agent followed Ruiz and his lawyer and went down the elevator with them. Other agents joined them and sought to arrest Ruiz in front of the courthouse. Ruiz ran and was arrested after a foot chase lasting the length of the courthouse.

For those wanting more facts, this long Twitter thread by Ann Jacobs of the Wisconsin Election Commission dissects the allegations and highlights the many weak aspects of the case.

Based principally on these details, the FBI has charged Dugan with two federal crimes: harboring or concealing Ruiz so as to prevent his discovery and arrest (18 U.S.C. §1071) and “corruptly obstructing or impeding the due and proper administration of law,” i.e., Ruiz’s deportation.

The challenge for the feds will be proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Dugan intended to prevent Ruiz's arrest. It seems at least equally plausible that Dugan wanted to avoid any scene in or in front of her courtroom. The idea that Judge Dugan was seeking to prevent Ruiz’s arrest doesn’t add up. She directed Ruiz to leave through another door but, as she well knew, into the public hallway where the agents were waiting. That's hardly consistent with a desire to prevent his arrest. And of course, he was arrested in short order.

It's very unlikely that a Wisconsin jury is going to view this case sympathetically in the first instance. But if Dugan testifies and proffers another explanation, it's hard to see how a jury convicts her beyond a reasonable doubt. Indeed, if the case goes to trial, the feds will be at genuine risk of losing, ignominiously, on a Rule 29 motion based on a finding from the judge that no reasonable jury could find that the government proved intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

In any event, here's my prediction that Judge Dugan will not be convicted on these charges.

It's also worth noting the likely impact of the case. Ruiz was in court to answer serious charges of domestic abuse, which seem to be his only brush with the law since he entered the country without authorization. Given the widespread publicity, we have to expect that other people here illegally will be far less likely to risk arrest on federal immigration charges by showing up for court. That's a far greater cost to public safety than the short chase that Attorney General Bondi emphasized.

(I also want to note this was not the only immigration-based story unfolding over the weekend. We saw two particularly cruel instances of administration officials apprehending two different women who were making their scheduled reporting visits to the ICE office, wreaking havoc on their families.)

So the case is fairly weak, and the FBI overreached. It's not the first time that's happened, and it's not unique to the Trump administration. Of far greater concern is the unprofessional and corrupt political exploitation of the charges by FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Patel’s social media post trumpeting the arrest, which he quickly deleted, was the least of it. His gross abuse of discretion began with the decision to physically arrest and handcuff Judge Dugan at the courthouse as she was arriving for work Friday. A defendant like Judge Dugan should have been permitted, and 999 times out of 1000 would have been permitted, to surrender voluntarily after receiving a summons. FBI and DOJ rules give guidance for when to physically arrest a charged defendant – e.g., that the defendant is a flight risk, or a danger to the community, or is likely to destroy evidence, or has an extensive criminal history. Every one of the factors points to self-surrender rather than arrest, much less in sensational fashion at the courthouse as she arrived for work.

Treating Judge Dugan like a violent, dangerous criminal was obviously designed to score broader political points about the Administration’s wholesale deportations initiative. Patel decided to humiliate Judge Dugan for a sensational headline and to strike fear into the hearts of other judges. That not only contravened DOJ guidelines; it was bush and cowboyish.

Which brings us to Attorney General Bondi and her deeply embarrassing and unlawful exploitation of the arrest. Within hours of the episode, Bondi took to the airwaves of Fox News, where she cheerfully trashed Judge Dugan. She presented the allegations in the complaint as fact and added her own editorial denigrations. She said of the judge, “shame on her,” and of the charges, “you can’t make this up.” She continued, “we could not believe that a judge really did that,” and “what has happened to the judiciary is beyond me,” finally asserting that Judge Dugan is “deranged.”

Since she came to office, Bondi has had a consistent tin ear and an abhorrent proclivity to pepper her every public statement with blandishments of Trump and a suggestion that DOJ attorneys work for him personally, rather than the public.

It is a fundamental constitutional requirement in this country that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, and that the government must prove all elements of a criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt. It is probably the single most important rule that a prosecutor must live by.

Accordingly, the U.S. Attorney’s Manual, the operating bible for federal prosecutors, requires strict adherence to that command. That includes forbidding prosecutors from offering opinions on a defendant’s guilt, supplying their own character assessments, or making any statement that could influence the outcome of a trial at the charging stage.

It is drummed into the head of every federal prosecutor that in announcing the filing of charges, you stick to the four corners of the charging document. Moreover, you emphasize that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty, a statement that appears routinely in every press release announcing an indictment.

Bondi’s diatribe transgressed all of these guidelines and more. For any prosecutor, state or federal, Bondi’s trashing of a just-charged defendant was breathtaking. In this and multiple other instances in her short tenure – her speech introducing the President at the DOJ particularly jumps to my mind – she has appalled DOJ veterans of all stripes and eras. She is a disgrace to her office.

Harry Litman is a former United States Attorney and the executive producer and host of theTalking Feds podcast. He has taught law at UCLA, Berkeley, and Georgetown and served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton Administration. Please consider subscribing toTalking Feds on Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

Bondi Responds Feebly To Anti-Semitic Attack On Shapiro Residence

Bondi Responds Feebly To Anti-Semitic Attack On Shapiro Residence

Attorney General Pam Bondi has been everywhere lately—screaming about deportations, threatening 20-year prison sentences for anyone who so much as exhales near a Tesla, and doing her part to kill college scholarship programs for students of color.

But what she hasn’t done is use her power to investigate actual threats, like the arson attack at the home of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

After days of silence, Bondi finally addressed the attack on Wednesday, calling it “horrific” and saying she “firmly” believes the arsonist wanted to kill Shapiro. But she stopped short of calling it “domestic terrorism,” a label that Bondi and Republicans she’s aligned herself with have thrown at peaceful Tesla protesters without hesitation.

The message is clear: If President Donald Trump doesn’t see a political advantage, Bondi doesn’t see a crime.

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer publicly called on the Department of Justice to treat the attack with the seriousness it deserves, including investigating it as a possible hate crime.

Cody Balmer, who was arrested for allegedly starting the fire at Shapiro’s house, reportedly targeted the Jewish governor for his pro-Israel stance—an attack that occurred during Passover. Balmer is currently being held in jail without bail.

“In conjunction with the timing of the attack during Passover, Governor Shapiro’s visible embrace of his Jewish faith, and the context of rising antisemitism globally and across the country raise serious concerns about antisemitic motivation,” Schumer, who is the highest-ranking Jewish public official in U.S. history, wrote in a letter to Bondi.

“Our federal authorities must bring the full weight of our civil-rights laws to bear in examining this matter. No person or public official should be targeted because of their faith, and no community should wonder whether such acts will be met with silence,” he added.

The DOJ and the White House have not publicly commented on Schumer’s request, but Bondi isn’t the only one who’s been quiet.

Shapiro told NBC News that Trump has yet to call him or issue any meaningful condemnation. When asked about it earlier this week, Trump dismissed the suspect as “just a whack job,” while also noting, pointedly, that the man “was not a fan of Trump.”

Jewish Democratic Council of America CEO Halie Soifer criticized Trump’s silence, noting his previous attacks on Shapiro.

“Last year, Trump didn’t hesitate to call Josh Shapiro a ‘highly overrated Jewish governor.’ Now, nearly four days after Gov. Shapiro was targeted in an act of political violence—reportedly due to his position on Israel—Trump hasn’t clearly condemned it,” she said.

Meanwhile, some Republicans have fully victim-blamed Shapiro for the attack. Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania, a potential 2026 challenger to Shapiro, said during a radio interview that the governor’s rhetoric may have fueled the attacker’s rage.

“The left’s got to look in the mirror here. Our hearts go out to the Shapiro family on this, but you know, they gotta tone it down too. I mean, every action Josh Shapiro has taken so far against the president has either been a lawsuit or a falsehood,” Meuser said.

Though Vice President JD Vance—hardly known for his moral clarity—called the attack “really disgusting violence” on Sunday, that kind of vague half-condemnation isn’t nearly enough.

Shapiro’s home was destroyed. He and his family were targeted. Yet the response from the Trump administration—which has been so busy supposedly fighting antisemitism—has been mostly crickets.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi

How Pam Bondi Could Curtail Abortion And Contraception Access

Pam Bondi was sworn in on February 5 as the 87th U.S. attorney general.

Bondi, who served as Florida’s first female attorney general from 2011 to 2019, is now responsible for advising President Donald Trump on legal matters and oversees the Department of Justice.

As Florida attorney general, Bondi supported and argued for restrictions and bans on abortion and contraception. She now has the power to enforce federal laws, including the Comstock Act.

The Comstock Act has been part of the U.S. Code since 1873. The so-called anti-vice law criminalizes the distribution through the U.S. mail of “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance; and— Every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use.” The punishment for violating the law is a fine, imprisonment for up to five years, or both.

While the scope of the law has been restricted over the years, and it has not been regularly enforced since the 1930s, anti-abortion activists and politicians see it as a tool for blocking the distribution of abortion medications. Bondi has not directly discussed her position on enforcing the Comstock Act, but her record of opposing abortion in Florida indicates the direction she is likely to go.

Bondi supported 24-hour mandatory waiting periods for patients seeking abortions. She joined amicus briefs against access to contraception, arguing the mandate that employers provide insurance coverage for it under the Affordable Care Act was a violation of religious freedom. She also joined with other state attorneys general in filing a brief defending a law in Alabama prohibiting abortion clinics from operating near schools and criminalizing abortion providers over the disposal of fetal tissue. She signed on to an amicus brief in support of Texas Senate Bill 8, which banned abortion after 14-16 weeks of pregnancy.

More recently, when Sen. Cory Booker asked Bondi during her January 14 confirmation hearing whether she would commit to continuing the U.S. Department of Justice’s defense of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval in 2000 of the abortion medication mifepristone as safe and effective, she said: “I will look at that policy. I am personally pro-life. I have always been pro-life,” adding, “I will not let my personal beliefs affect how I carry out the law.”

However, Bondi recently told Louisiana 18th Judicial District Attorney Tony Clayton, after he issued an indictment against a New York abortion provider on charges of mailing abortion pills to patients in the state, “I would love to work with you,” a possible indication that she might be willing to enforce Comstock or stop shield laws, legislation that protects medical providers from investigation, subpoenas, warrants, and demands for extradition from another state.

On January 22, 13 anti-abortion leaders sent a letter to acting Attorney General James McHenry asking the Department of Justice to begin enforcing Comstock, referring to it as a “trafficking” law.

“Enforcement of the federal anti-abortion trafficking law is crucial to ensuring that abortion pills are not distributed in violation of federal and state laws,” reads the letter, posted online by the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life. “Blatant violations of the federal Act expose women to dangerous and unsafe drugs and undermine the integrity of the medical profession. We ask that the DOJ prioritize investigations and enforcement against those who are involved in the illegal distribution of abortion pills.”

Reprinted with permission from Wisconsin Independent.

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