The White House is in full-blown turmoil as some of President Trump’s favorite people have the pitchforks out for his attorney general, Pam Bondi.

The Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories that helped him ooze his way back to the White House are back like vultures. That is well-earned karma for Bondi. She promised Conspiracy World to serve up raw meat — the client list! Names! — and failed spectacularly to deliver.

But that misadventure is not the major reason why a responsible Congress would already have impeached her.

Bondi is on course to be the nation’s worst modern attorney general since John Mitchell, of Watergate infamy.

Among other things, she has given Trump her official blessing to flout any law, such as the TikTok ban, on the pretense that it conflicts with his constitutional duties (the Constitution makes no such exception).

That was tantamount to declaring him a dictator, as if he needed any encouragement.

No bar is too low

There seems to be no low too low for Bondi. But at least she’s consistent.

She recently fired three career prosecutors who were instrumental in convicting Trump’s Jan. 6 rioters, whom he has pardoned for their attempt to overthrow the government.

Among the three: Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon, in Florida’s Middle District, four days after he had indicted a St. Petersburg businessman, Leo Govani, in the embezzlement of more than $100 million from medical trust funds for needy victims of accidents and major illness.

Firing the lead prosecutor in such a case implies indulgence not only to white collar crime — another familiar object of Trump pardons — but also to a major Republican political donor as Govani is. It feeds Trump’s pathological thirst for revenge.

But that grave misconduct is not why Laura Loomer, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and other MAGA stars are after Bondi. Their beef is how Bondi, in a Fox News interview, appeared to concede that the Department of Justice had a client list among its still-undisclosed trove of information on the sex trafficking case of Epstein, and that she would release it.

‘Sitting on my desk’

“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” Bondi told Fox.

A persistent far right fantasy is that former President Bill Clinton would be on such a list. Some on the left imagine the same of Trump, who partied with Epstein for decades and was president when the notorious sexual predator died in a New York jail six years ago.

But the DOJ said last week it will release no more Epstein documents and that no such list exists. Most remaining material is essentially child pornography and there is no evidence of blackmail or unindicted suspects, the DOJ’s memo said.

The White House and DOJ failed to placate Loomer and Co. by saying Bondi had referred only to the Epstein files in general, not to any list implicating others.

“Bondi lied,” said an X post by Loomer, who is very influential with Trump. “She was always lying.”

FBI is entangled, too

The turmoil also involves the FBI, which Bondi oversees. Director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino came to Trump’s attention by circulating Epstein conspiracy theories accusing the FBI of a coverup. Now, they’re reportedly trying to undermine Bondi.

Adding to Bondi’s troubles with Conspiracy World is a two-minute gap in the 11-hour surveillance video of Epstein’s cell the night he died. Bondi’s explanation that it was a routine reset by the Bureau of Prisons may be true, but truth has become irrelevant in contemporary Washington.

Bondi has committed the cardinal sin of embarrassing Trump. She’s done worse.

After having been a $115,000-a-month lobbyist for the emirate of Qatar, she signed off on the Middle East monarchy’s odious gift of a $400 million jet to Trump, which supposedly isn’t a payoff to him but to his future presidential library.

It is blatantly unconstitutional for a U.S. president to accept any gift from a foreign ruler without the consent of Congress.

A harbinger in Florida

The firing of career prosecutors calls to mind how Bondi, as Florida attorney general, forced out two assistants who offended a Jacksonville company linked to mortgage fraud investigations.

Her Florida tenure foreshadowed how she has behaved as Trump’s consigliere. She refused to act on complaints against his fraudulent Trump University and then took an illegal $25,000 campaign contribution from his charitable foundation.

The Tik Tok matter is historically grave. Bondi could have exercised prosecutorial discretion in carrying out the ban that Congress voted and the Supreme Court approved. Instead, she effectively declared the law null and void by authorizing tech companies to ignore it.

The proper course for a president who disagrees with a law is to ask Congress to suspend or repeal it. Given Trump’s immense influence with this Congress, it probably would have agreed.

But what the president wanted, and what Bondi has given him, is a blank check to simply ignore any law he doesn’t like under cover of some fatuous reference to his constitutional responsibilities.

One of those is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

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The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

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