Humiliation as yet another Bondi bomb fizzles out: report

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media in the Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington D.C., June 27, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno/File Photo

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department continued its track record of humiliation defeats, this time over a special education classroom assistant in Minnesota who was detained while protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Former attorney general Pam Bondi was quick to post on X the arrest of protestors connected to Homeland Security in January, but on Tuesday Trump's own prosecutors in Minnesota surrendered charges against Christina Rank, who Bondi accused of attacking agents. The government lawyers themselves concluded they did not have enough evidence to proceed with a prosecution.

“The United States of America, by and through its attorneys, Daniel N. Rosen, United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota, and Robert G. Tucker III, Special Assistant United States Attorney, hereby requests that the Court dismiss this case with prejudice pursuant to Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure,” the court said in its statement.

They added, “On July 9, 2026, the Court issued an order granting the Defendant's motion for a bill of particulars. Upon a further review of the evidence and affidavit in support of the complaint, the government does not believe that probable cause for assault exists. Based on a lack of probable cause and in the interest of justice, the government requests this case be dismissed with prejudice.”

At the time of Rank’s detainment, the Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed that “on January 12, while ICE law enforcement were parked in a parking lot in Inver Grove, MN a vehicle belonging to a U.S. citizen pulled up next to the agents, asked if they were ICE, and began honking her horn and yelling ‘you are terrorists.’”

They added, “ICE departed the parking lot and she proceed to stalk law enforcement officers and moved her vehicle dangerously getting close to them. As ICE agents attempted to turn, the individual tried to cut their vehicle off and collided with law enforcement's vehicle.Officers then attempted to get her out of the vehicle and arrest her for obstruction—a federal crime. The woman refused and disobeyed commands. ICE officers followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to make the arrest.”

But this surrender is far from the first occasion when Trump’s Justice Department has let him down. Despite trying to create a $1.8 billion slush fund for his political supporters and Trump-affiliated institutions after suing his own IRS over his leaked tax returns, judges stepped in to block the disbursement of the funds on the grounds that it may have constituted illegal self-dealing.

As of December, Trump’s track record with the Justice Department was so spotty that the institution — which normally has no difficulty obtaining indictments because of its sterling reputation — was instead failing on one out of five occasions.

“A 21 percent dismissal rate,” wrote Mediaite contributing editor Sarah Rumpf. “Twenty-one percent. That means that more than one out of every five criminal cases brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. are getting dismissed by the courts, a truly stunning turnaround for an office long known for experienced prosecutors able to handle the most complicated of cases.”

Indeed, despite the famous expression that the Justice Department can indict a ham sandwich, in August they failed to secure an indictment against a high-profile case involving a sandwich. An indictment against Charles Sean Dunn, a former Justice Department paralegal who threw a Subway sandwich at a federal officer in Washington, fell through.

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