Pam Bondi now has all the ammunition she needs to end the weaponisation of American justice
As Americans prepared for this week’s Thanksgiving holiday, on Monday Donald Trump was given something for which he could be especially thankful. Jack Smith, the federal special prosecutor appointed in 2022 by Joe Biden’s Justice Department to investigate aspects of Trump’s conduct during his previous administration, effectively ended both federal criminal prosecutions against the once and future president.
In Washington, DC, where Smith had charged Trump with crimes associated with attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, the prosecutor filed a successful motion to have the case dismissed. In Florida, where Trump stood accused of illegally retaining official documents, Smith’s office withdrew its appeal from a July 2024 court ruling that dismissed the government’s case. Smith’s argument is that legal precedents dating back to Richard Nixon in 1973 and Bill Clinton in 2000 prevent the prosecution of a sitting president, which Trump will soon be again.
Along with two languishing state-level prosecutions in New York and Georgia, the federal criminal cases against Trump have been widely seen as politically motivated. Indeed, now that Trump has won re-election, Smith’s decision to end the prosecutions are only likely to confirm long-held suspicions about their true motivations.
Smith, who faces investigation by the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee for his conduct in his handling of Trump’s cases, was appointed special prosecutor by Biden’s attorney general Merrick Garland only three days after Trump announced his 2024 re-election bid. He then waited until the summer of 2023 to indict the former president, just weeks before the Republican primary race began in earnest.
If the intent was to embarrass Trump or remove him from the presidential contest through legal action, the timing could hardly have been better. It would also have been part of a trend. Both former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and perennial French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen are currently facing legal measures seemingly designed to keep them off future ballots.
If anything, however, the cases appear to have consolidated political support behind the president-elect, who denounced them as an outrageous abuse of power amounting to “lawfare”. He has also called for an end to the “weaponisation” of law enforcement to achieve political objectives, a task he planned to give to former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general. Gaetz withdrew from the nomination due to lingering personal controversy, but his replacement – former Florida state attorney general Pam Bondi – appears just as willing to reform the Justice Department in line with Trump’s vision.
Cases backfire
The state-level cases against Trump appear to have similarly backfired. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who was accused of campaigning on a promise to “get Trump”, indicted the former president on misdemeanour business record falsification charges that he magnified into felony offences on the basis of an untested legal theory. In May, Trump was convicted on all counts. The prosecution’s naked partisanship, however, proved too obvious to harm his campaign. At present, Trump’s New York case may be dismissed before sentencing, which has been indefinitely postponed. Fani Willis, a Georgia district attorney who filed racketeering charges against Trump over the 2020 election, also campaigned on a promise to prosecute him, but has been mired in an ethics controversy and may also see her case fail.
This is all very good news for Trump, but he may not be completely in the clear. Smith’s Washington case could theoretically be refiled after Trump leaves office. The charges carry a five-year statute of limitations, yet it is unclear whether the clock will stop while Trump serves his next term. In Florida, Smith did not withdraw his appeal from the July ruling with respect to Trump’s two co-defendants, employees who allegedly abetted his document retention and could still face a trial focused on past actions of the future president.
Nevertheless, it is now unlikely that the Justice Department will escape reforms that would remove prosecutors who might again be tempted to take on Trump, who will be 82 when he leaves office in 2029. He could also issue presidential pardons for his Florida co-defendants and, possibly, himself, which he will have the constitutional authority to do upon returning to office in January.
In any event, Donald Trump’s legal troubles are probably over – and in the eyes of his allies, Pam Bondi will have all the ammunition that she needs to end the “weaponisation” of American justice.
Paul du Quenoy is a historian and president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute