A legal brief authored by Pam Bondi before she became Donald Trump’s Attorney General could come back to haunt their relationship.
On Tuesday, MS NOW host Jonathan Lemire pointed to a report from the New York Times which uncovered work that Bondi did for a conservative think tank that was submitted to the Supreme Court — and made a case for the limitations of presidential power.
As the Times reported, Bondi, working for the America First Policy Institute, helped write a friend-of-the-court brief for three military officers in which she argued, “Military officers are required not to carry out unlawful orders.”
At the same time that the Trump solicitor general has been arguing before the nation’s highest court that the president has almost unlimited powers, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is caught up in a firestorm over the killing of two survivors of a Pentagon attack, Bondi's think tank legal filing could be used against the DOJ arguing for him in the future.
Lemire pointed out that Trump’s now-AG, “Elaborated, writing the military would not carry out a patently unlawful order from the president to kill nonmilitary targets. Indeed, service members are required not to do so."
He added, “The court was wrestling with questions surrounding executive authority and whether presidents were immune from prosecution.”
He continued, “Discussing one hypothetical, Bondi writes, ‘A president cannot order an elite military unit to kill a political rival, and the members of the military are required not to carry out such an unlawful order. It would be a crime to do so.’”
The New York Times reported, “The brief was filed in support of Mr. Trump, who was asking the Supreme Court to grant him immunity from prosecution on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election,” and that, at the time, Bondi was attempting to shoot down accusations that the president would make such a demand as "unrealistic."