Caffeinated Politics

Being a decades-long Richard Nixon history buff allows me, at times, to put current political events in the context of what our nation endured in the 1970s. As news gleefully spread that Pam Bondi was removed as the attorney general today, it was a natural connection for me to think about John Mitchell, the attorney general during Nixon’s first term in office.

For younger readers, his name might not sound familiar. For those who are a bit older or who have read the history of the 1970s, Mitchell’s name is synonymous with the corrosion of law at the very top of government. Historians correctly cite his appalling central role in the Watergate crimes. The sweep of his crimes included the approval of illegal wiretaps on journalists, the greenlighting of the “Huston Plan” for domestic surveillance, and his involvement in the Committee to Re‑elect the President (aptly named CREEP). As the investigation unfolded, prosecutors argued that he blatantly blurred the line between law enforcement and political enforcement. The result was that he became the highest-ranking U.S. official ever convicted of crimes related to abuse of power. His legacy is a cautionary tale of how the nation’s top law officer can damage the very institutions one is sworn to defend.

Enter Pam Bondi in 2025.

Time and time again, Bondi followed a similar pattern of subordinating legal duty to political convenience in embarrassingly public displays of fluffing Donald Trump at the expense of fulfilling her duties to the office she took an oath to uphold. She has a severely tarnished reputation with numerous examples of her lack of professionalism in upholding the law. Public records show multiple episodes raising questions about her profound lack of character and lack of adherence to the law. Consider her not pursuing an investigation into a high-profile charity after receiving a political donation, repeatedly joining multistate lawsuits aimed at weakening federal consumer protections, and using the power of her office to challenge health-care reforms that expanded coverage for her own constituents. Consider her racial animus when making poorly thought-out decisions in voting rights cases, in which Florida’s legal pernicious positions under her ‘leadership’ were correctly criticized for restricting access rather than protecting it.

Bondi is named in a class-action suit for illegal firings of FBI agents and officials who worked on Capitol riot cases or investigations into Donald Trump’s criminal behavior. The suit claims she orchestrated these firings to “curry favor” and “carry out political vendettas”.

She will find her absurd suggestion that the executive branch could override the 14th Amendment, being so trashed by the Supreme Court that no honorable Mexican restaurant will allow her entrance. Let her be forced to use Taco Bell. Her profoundly racist views are clear to see as she persistently challenged birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants.

Her only interest over the years, as records prove, has been to undercut the spirit and wording of constitutional safeguards by placing partisan alignment above the impartial application of law.

Both Mitchell and Bondi illustrate how attorneys general can inflict lasting institutional damage through steady partisan erosion. They both are proof of what happens when prosecutorial discretion is turned into cheap partisan currency. Both of these seriously flawed people worked to shape their behavior to fit the moment. They each treated constitutional obligations as negotiable. Their records, as described by historians who have studied Mitchell’s past and legal observers who have been shocked at Bondi, serve as reminders that the office’s power is vast, and its misuse can echo long after the headlines fade.