The most subversive aspect of Donald Trump’s tyrannical designs and paranoia is his corruption of the Department of Justice.

He has made it into a personal weapon against any perceived foe whom he wants to destroy. This alone makes Trump’s third impeachment long overdue.

He couldn’t do it alone. His accomplices need to be held to account, especially the administration’s most notorious Floridian, Pam Bondi, his former attorney general, and Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general whom he now wants the Senate to confirm as her successor.

The corruption doesn’t stop with trying to invent crimes where there aren’t any, as in the James Comey “seashell” case.

The $1.8 billion slush fund to reward his Jan. 6 mob and stifle IRS tax audits is not dead after all, despite a court ruling against it. If it were, his stooges in the Senate wouldn’t have needed to protect it during a recent immigration budget debate.

Blanche, his former personal lawyer, concocted it in staggering disregard of legal ethics. For the Senate to confirm him would be a monumental disgrace.

Fifty-four senators, including eight Republicans, voted to prevent any payments to people convicted of assaulting police officers on Jan. 6. That was six votes short.

Florida Sen. Ashley Moody, usually a Trump drone, voted for the amendment, but then muddled her own message by voting for the unamended bill. Sen. Rick Scott sided with the cop-beaters both times.

The Bar must step up

As for Bondi, who served as Trump’s unquestioning consigliere before he fired her for not being ruthless enough, she should be in deep trouble with the Florida Bar now. Otherwise, something would be very wrong there, too.

An ethics complaint refiled with the Bar by Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) makes serious charges over how she ravaged the Department of Justice, compromising its integrity and firing or driving out more than 2,500 of its lawyers.

The document alleges numerous violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct intended to govern all Florida lawyers, wherever they work.

The Bar, which calls itself “the state’s guardian for the integrity of the legal profession,” gave a dubious excuse for rejecting the initial complaint a year ago. It would not pursue discipline, in which the ultimate penalty is disbarment, against any Florida-licensed lawyer who holds a federal constitutional office.

Nothing in the U.S. Constitution or federal law requires the attorney general to be a licensed lawyer.

Nonetheless Bondi got a pass, but it should have expired when Trump fired her. According to her LinkedIn profile, she is back at Ballard Partners, a powerful lobbying firm in Washington and Florida.

Retired Florida Supreme Court Justice Peggy Quince is the lead lawyer on LDAD’s complaint. It’s also signed by former Justice Barbara Pariente and more than 140 other former judges and law professors.

Among many other things, the 23-page complaint charges Bondi with rules violations in the handling of millions of pages of Jeffrey Epstein files, as required by Congress, specifically “her failure to supervise subordinate officers in their review and release of the files” leading to the “release of sensitive victim information of nearly 100 individual survivors.”

Passing the buck

In a closed-door session before the House Oversight Committee, Bondi repeatedly tried to offload the blame on her then-deputy, Blanche, who she said “was managing the entire investigation.”

The complaint accuses her of ordering DOJ lawyers to violate legal ethics. One notable example: The resignation or dismissal of more than a dozen lawyers for refusing to dismiss a well-founded corruption case against former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, whom Trump wanted to co-opt as an anti-immigration ally.

The document also cites DOJ’s failure to “prevent or rectify over 100 violations of court orders” in habeas corpus cases, and of bringing unjustified charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director Comey and others.

LDAD is performing a noble public service by working to hold government lawyers to account much like the American Bar Association did during Watergate, a half-century ago.

Chesterfield Smith, a renowned Florida lawyer who was ABA president, created a special office to refer Watergate offenders to appropriate state bar groups. Eight, including the ex-president and his former attorney general, were disbarred. Six were suspended for various durations.

The Bondi case is an unprecedented test of resolve not just for the Bar, but for the Florida Supreme Court, which created and oversees the agency.

When the lawyer who filed last year’s Bondi complaint asked the court to order the Bar to accept it, the court refused. Six of its seven justices were chosen by Gov. Ron DeSantis for their conservative credentials.

What the Bar does with complaints is, by rule, generally not public until a finding of probable cause. That takes time. The public is waiting.

If the Bar and the court mean what they say about holding Florida lawyers to high ethical standards for the public’s sake, those standards should apply to Bondi the same as to any lesser-known attorney.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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