Don’t Blame Brad Bondi for His Sister 

B rad Bondi is campaigning to head the D.C. Bar. He has a sober and distinguished record as a lawyer, has long been active in the bar and the community, occupies a leadership position at a major law firm (Paul Hastings, where he co-chairs the firm’s white collar defense and investigations group), and has served in government in the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department. He has taught as an adjunct professor at the law schools of Yale, Georgetown, George Mason, and Catholic University, and has endowed a scholarship at the University of Florida College of Law. There’s just one problem for his critics: His sister Pam is the attorney general under Donald Trump. 

Thicker Than Blood 

By the fact of his sister, together with his representations of the sorts of clients that any Republican lawyer would get, Bondi has drawn attacks from George Conway, who should know better. Conway, by his own admission the last person who should play the guilt-by-family-association card when it comes to Trump officials, recorded a video message: 

I know Brad Bondi, not well, and I have nothing personally against him. A number of years ago, in more ordinary times, we worked together at different firms for the same client on related matters, and I found him to be a fine and honorable professional. We even had enjoyable conversations about political matters, on which we pretty much agreed. But here’s the rub. Today, he’s running to be president of the DC Bar, and his sister is the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi . . .

The DOJ under Pam Bondi is engaged in a full-scale assault on our constitution and on the rule of law. . . As Donald Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi is overseeing an unprecedented effort to nullify statutory mandates and to deny constitutional rights…In these extraordinary times, the D.C. Bar, like all bar associations, has a moral obligation to take stands against the debasement of the rule of law that Pam Bondi is helping to carry out. . . . And that’s why Brad Bondi isn’t the right person to lead the D.C. Bar at this time. Not now. Not at this extraordinarily perilous moment for our legal system.

Then there’s Brendan Ballou, in Slate: 

One front in this war on the rule of law has received little attention, and it’s an important one: Brad Bondi, the brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, is running to become president of the District of Columbia Bar. The bar is involved in administering the admission and discipline of some 120,000 attorneys in and out of government. If he were elected, would Bondi try to suspend or disbar those lawyers who stood in the president’s—or his sister’s—way?

And Nicolle Wallace’s “Deadline: White House” podcast, featuring Ballou and that pillar of the law, Al Sharpton: 

Wallace: Brendan, this feels like one of those “look away, look away” moments, but meanwhile, the steering wheel of a very important, normally under-the-radar legal position is grabbed by a potential MAGA super-ally.

Ballou: One of the first things Ed Martin did as interim U.S. Attorney was fire prosecutors working on January 6th cases and start an investigation into those prosecutorial decisions. If Martin and his allies gained control of the D.C. Bar, it would take time because the Bar’s disciplinary role is indirect, but it could be leveraged to punish attorneys involved in January 6th prosecutions or those resisting the Trump administration.

Sharpton: Trump spends a lot of time obsessing over his legal problems. This architecture—seeding allies in these positions—is about getting Democratic-affiliated law firms to cave, which they do too willingly, attacking judges, stacking the Bar with his allies, and putting a super-MAGA figure in the D.C. Attorney’s office. It’s like he’s trying to burn down the legal system and checks and balances because they dared drag him through the courts.

It’s not hard to spot a darker motive here: not to prevent the weaponization of the bar but to ensure it. In an interview for the bar about his candidacy, Bondi “said he is focused on ensuring the D.C. Bar stays nonpartisan.” “The D.C. Bar is not, and must not become, a political organization,” Bondi said. “I will fight vigorously against any attempts externally or internally to change that. The D.C. Bar should continue its role as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical organization committed to the service of its members.” He added in a statement reported by Bloomberg News, “the Bar has a non-partisan mission, which I intend to vigilantly protect against any push to politicize it.” 

Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman of the New York Times, however, describe Bondi’s efforts to keep the bar nonpartisan as an obstacle to its weaponization: 

The D.C. Bar, a mandatory body to which every lawyer practicing in Washington, D.C., is required to register, oversees disciplinary actions, such as when it acted to disbar former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York for promoting lies about the 2020 election. It could soon become a venue to resolve complaints about the conduct of other Trump allies. Former prosecutors and Democrats are considering filing complaints against department officials over what they claim are efforts to inject politics into prosecutorial decision making, particularly at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.

That’s nonsense, as Jacqueline Thomsen and Suzanne Monyak of Bloomberg explain: 

Current and former bar officials and members said that, if elected, Bondi wouldn’t oversee the disciplinary proceedings, and any other influence he could have over that work would be tempered by other bar leaders or the District of Columbia Court of Appeals….If elected, Bondi—through his role on the bar’s board of governors—would help recommend members for the Board on Professional Responsibility, a panel that reviews disciplinary findings against Washington attorneys. Final disciplinary decisions are made by the local District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which appoints the members of the professional responsibility board.

“The disciplinary system operates independently from the D.C. Bar, and we have no control or influence over cases that are investigated or prosecuted by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel,” Robert Spagnoletti, CEO of the D.C. Bar, said.

The board of governors also approves the bar’s budget, including money set aside for the disciplinary counsel’s office. Any conflict over those funds are taken to the DC Court of Appeals, and former bar officials say they don’t recall that ever happening.

Even Thrush and Goldman admit that their thesis isn’t grounded in reality: “The role does not extend to controlling disbarments and other disciplinary actions, which are handled by a board of professional responsibility that is appointed and overseen by a court, according to the association’s bylaws.” But, they say, it “comes at a time when Ms. Bondi, like many other Trump appointees, is quashing internal dissent and seeking retribution against President Trump’s perceived enemies in ways that have challenged norms of prosecutorial independence from politics.” What would the Times do without the connective tissue of that hoary standby, the “comes at a time” suggestion that a complete non sequitur is related to a story simply because the authors want to rant against Trump? 

Left-wing critics are left to offer speculation in place of actually explaining how the process works, as offered in the Bloomberg article: 

David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, said that even though the disciplinary proceedings aren’t run by bar leadership, he’s still concerned that the process could be manipulated as a retaliatory move due to cases against Trump allies. He raised the possibility of charges being filed against Washington lawyers who’ve worked on lawsuits against early Trump administration actions. “There’s a concern that they would seek to politicize the disciplinary process, and to politicize the bar more generally,” said Cole, the ACLU’s former national legal director.

Bondi spokesman Jim McCarthy has explained how bad the Times reporting is, and the evident motives of Conway, Ballou, and other critics: 

Had the Times reporters taken basic steps such as actually calling the Bar Association, this could have been explained…Mr. Bondi offered his name for that role many months ago [not February, as the Times claimed] and it was the Bar’s nominating committee that chose to put him forward as a candidate…Mr. Bondi would have no influence or participation in disciplinary matters… The reporting is not just sloppy, in other words, it’s willful.

McCarthy also argues that the Times got wrong the extent of Brad Bondi’s involvement in the bar, the timeline of one of his representations, and whether he responded to a Times request for comment. 

The controversy has, if nothing else, been good for turnout in the normally sleepy D.C. Bar election. According to a D.C. Bar official in late April, more than twice as many votes had already been cast in the race than in any D.C. Bar election ever, and there’s still a month of balloting left to go. Here’s hoping that they vote against politics.