U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, view fireworks at Trump National Golf Club Washington DC in Sterling, Virginia, U.S., January 18, 2025.
President Donald Trump’s attempt to exact vengeance against his political enemies has been a “Keystone Cops effort,” according to a prominent conservative journalist’s accounting.
“Another big loss for the Trump Justice Department in their Keystone Cop efforts to go after their political foes,” observed Tim Miller of The Bulwark. “For all of you know, the awful fascist advances of this administration, the one thing that continues to bring us joy is just the utter incompetence and failure in their effort to weaponize the Justice Department to get revenge against their political foes.”
Mentioning that Trump and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, vowed to prosecute former President Joe Biden for using an autopen (which he did do, although it is not illegal) and stealing the 2020 presidential election (which he did not do), Miller pointed out that all of those supposed prosecutions have been busts.
“Remember all those? Has anybody gone to jail for any of those yet?” Miller said in his podcast. “Supposedly Joe Biden stole the election in 2020. It's interesting that some of the biggest proponents of that case — Donald Trump, [FBI Director] Kash Patel, Pam Bondi — haven't been able to find any of the ‘perpetrators.’ So nobody's in jail for that.”
Miller focused on Bondi, whose prominence in the case is especially notable because she has been harshly criticized for her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Trump, who had a decades-long friendship with the convicted child sex trafficker and was accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old in the 1980s, denies any wrongdoing. Bondi testified before Congress last month on Trump’s behalf and controversially refused to apologize to the Epstein victims.
"Attorney General Bondi, you apologized to the survivors in your opening statement for what they went through at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein. Will you turn to them now and apologize for what your Department of Justice has put them through with the absolutely unacceptable release of the Epstein files and their information?" asked Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) at the time. Bondi declined to answer the question, instead pivoting to other subjects.
"Bondi repeatedly criticized the administrations of Joe Biden and prior presidents for their handling of Epstein," former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said later. "She accused Democrats of focusing on the files to distract from Trump’s criminal justice agenda and in one bizarre instance even cited the performance of the stock market to defend the president."
Similarly, New York Times opinion columnist and former Republican David French heavily criticized Bondi’s performance.
“The most telling moment [in her testimony] was when she tried to stop questioning about Epstein, which was ostensibly the subject of the testimony, by saying the Dow was at 50,000 … which is about as relevant as saying, ‘Why are we talking about Epstein when the Knicks won last night?’” French said. “ … [H]e really is putting in front of Pam Bondi: ‘Hey, Pam, here is your job in one corner. And here in the other corner is reason, logic, morality, and decency. You have to give up all of those things. But if you do, you can continue to be the attorney general of the United States.’ And this is the test he’s putting in front of basically everyone in Republican politics right now.”