The first U.S. Attorney General was Edmund Jennings Randolph. He was a cousin of former President Thomas Jefferson and was appointed attorney general by President George Washington.

Including Randolph, the United States has had 87 attorneys general. The 87th and current attorney general, Pam Bondi, has taken the Department of Justice to depths that Randolph, Jefferson and Washington would have never thought possible.

Bondi was born and raised in Florida, graduating from Stetson University Law School. After serving most of her career as an assistant district attorney, she was the first woman elected Florida attorney general.

Since leaving the AG's office, Bondi assumed the role of a President Donald Trump loyalist. She was his personal attorney during his first impeachment and rallied for Trump during his third campaign for president.

Although she was Trump's second choice for attorney general — former congressman Matt Gaetz's nomination crashed and burned — Bondi has zealously demonstrated her commitment to Trump.

The last few weeks have demonstrated that the Department of Justice is not independent of the president, but rather a tool of the partisan machinations of a president hell-bent on revenge against his political opponents.

Bondi was summoned to appear at a Senate Judiciary Committee Oversight Hearing on Oct. 7, 2025, and came with guns a blazing. Most of the hearing, she refused to answer questions asked by Democratic committee members. When she did respond, it was probably the most outrageous conduct by a sitting attorney general in American history.

According to The New York Times, California Sen. Adam B. Schiff ticked off a list of more than a dozen questions Ms. Bondi had declined to answer. Schiff asked about Immigration Czar Tom Homan's acceptance of $50,000.00 in a bag given to him by undercover FBI agents during a sting operation. More pointedly, Schiff asked why the FBI and/or DOJ dropped the investigation.

"Will you support a request by this committee to provide that Homan tape or tapes to the committee? Yes or no?" Schiff asked, according to the Times.

"You can talk to Patel about that," she said, referring to the F.B.I. director.

"I'm talking to you," he replied. "Will you support that request?"

Her response, "Will you apologize to Donald Trump?" She then called U.S. Sen. Adam B. Schiff "a failed lawyer" and added that she would have fired him if he had worked for her.

Bondi's attack on Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee was sandwiched between two even more grievous attacks on the rule of law.

Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted on September 25 on charges of making a false statement and obstruction related to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020. The indictment came only days after President Trump demanded that Bondi act "now" to bring charges against his political foes.

To appreciate the gravity of the Comey indictment, first consider that the prior U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, had expressed doubts internally about bringing charges against Comey, as well as New York Attorney General Letitia James. Siebert was essentially fired.

Trump then immediately installed Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, as U.S. attorney. Halligan pulled the trigger on Comey's indictment. She then turned her sights on James. Attorney General James had a target on her back since she led a successful civil fraud action against Trump in 2023.

Last week, she was indicted by Halligan's office on federal charges. Prosecutors accuse James of alleged bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution regarding a mortgage loan for a house in Norfolk, Va., according to the BBC.

These are dark days for the Department of Justice. The Department's mission statement includes the following: "(T)o ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans."

As Ruth Marcus recently wrote in The New Yorker, Trump and Bondi's conduct is not impartial justice: "The essence of impartial justice is treating like conduct alike — not identifying the target and then finding the crime."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino