‘Significant missteps’: Pam Bondi’s performance under scrutiny

There's a lot of complaints after the Jimmy Kimmel affair this week that somehow Trump is cracking down on free speech. Now, I spoke a little while ago about, you know, I think it's great to enforce the left's rules on them, but I was also a bit concerned about something that Pam Bondi, the attorney general, spoke about earlier, and that was using hate speech laws against the left. Have a look at this. Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people so we show them that some action is better than no action? We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. Now, John, I was happy for Jimmy Kimmel to get the flick because, of course, that's the cancel culture rules just turning around on the left. But I was concerned about this. Now, I want your opinion as a lawyer. Why would Pam Bondi go out, and she later walked it back, but why would she go out and frame this whole thing in the terms of hate speech, which would seem to be the worst case or the worst sort of lefty framing to use to do what they're trying to do? James, this was from outer space. The liberals for decades have been trying to create a hate speech exception to the First Amendment. And, of course, hate speech is whatever they say it is. You know, this is not a kind of a legal term or a term of art. And that has been uniformly rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2017, there was a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court that again said, no, there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. And that's always been a liberal theme, not a conservative theme. And for Pam Bondi to say that, even though she then walked it back the next day after there was quite a bit of blowback, is frankly almost inexplicable. Yeah, I mean, how do you rate Pam Bondi's performance as attorney general? Because a lot of people I'm talking to in the United States are saying that she may be the weakest link in this cabinet. Well, I didn't think that going in, James, but she's had two significant missteps so far. That was one. And the other was when she really over-promised on the Jeffrey Epstein case, acted like they had all this dynamite information and they're going to make it public. And then it was this kind of pop gun, you know, that had like no significant follow-up. Both of those instances put her in kind of a bad light. The jury is still out. The administration is young, but those were disappointing. Hey, I wanted to ask you about Epstein. So I'm glad you mentioned that because FBI Director Kash Patel was at a fiery House committee hearing this week, grilled about the Epstein case from the Democrats. Have a look at this. Have you released all of the stuff that the FBI has seized from Epstein's house, the computers, the emails, the file cabinets, the documents? What about the financial records? Have you released all of that? Everything the court has allowed us to. Which court are you talking about? Three separate federal courts have come in and said. We're talking about the evidence you've got. It's got nothing to do with what those courts have. Do you have any idea how the law works? Do you want me to break the law in a federal judge's order? No, I want you to follow your own word, Director Patel. You said up there it was under the direct control of the FBI director. Now, John, put aside the bizarre idea that now the Democrats want the Trump administration to ignore a court ruling, which is pretty funny and ironic. You've got a really interesting essay on your Powerline blog about the Epstein case and your thoughts about why actually a lot of the stuff people think might be there might not be there. Tell us about that. Yeah, it's really interesting, James. This was really based on a piece in the magazine First Things that raised some points that I was not familiar with. I wrote about them on my website. There were 12 young women involved in this scandal down in Florida. Epstein was down in Palm Beach. One of them came to the law enforcement. They investigated. Ultimately, there were 12 young women who gave evidence against Jeffrey Epstein. But the interesting thing is that none of them mentioned any other men being involved in this situation other than Jeffrey Epstein. It was only him. And then, of course, we had the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was his confederate, who recruited young women for him and so on. And she was criminally prosecuted. She's now in prison. But in that prosecution, she was accused of procuring young women for only one man, Jeffrey Epstein. No evidence about anyone else. And it turns out that this whole theory about this pedophile ring and Jeffrey Epstein and all his influential friends who like underage girls and maybe intelligence agencies being involved and this whole thing is very likely a fantasy that came along quite a few years after the fact. And it turns out that there's very little, if any, evidentiary support for it. And so the idea that Epstein had this black book, you know, with all these politicians and celebrities in it, you know, it just isn't true. Patel was asked in that same hearing, I believe, about that so-called black book, which people are eagerly waiting for. He said, well, no, we released that. It's called the index, you know, when you look at the list of documents. But there's nothing in it. And so I think that this whole Epstein thing has taken on an aura of myth. Indeed. Well, John, that's a really interesting perspective on that. Thank you for sharing that with us. And check out more of John's stuff on the Powerline blog.