Pam Bondi Replaces Her Embarrassing Reading Comprehension Failure with a 4A Violation
When Judge Cameron Currie surprised Pam Bondi’s Counselor, Henry Whitaker, on Thursday with a question about whether DOJ believes Aileen Cannon wrongly dismissed Trump’s stolen documents case, Whitaker claimed what distinguished Jack Smith from Lindsey Halligan is that Halligan is closely supervised.
I do think that mostly what was driving Judge Cannon’s decision in that case was sort of the unique and broad authority that the special counsel possessed sort of free of supervision, which, of course, is an element that we do not have here.
He said that, mind you, even while conceding that Pam Bondi had claimed to ratify the Comey indictment even though the transcripts didn’t show how Halligan instructed the grand jury, yet.
MR. WHITAKER: Well, it’s true that — it is true, Your Honor, you’re right, that we didn’t have the intro and back end of the grand jury transcripts when we presented that.
Between that day, on October 31, when Pam Bondi claimed to ratify Lindsey’s work without noticing she couldn’t see that work, and yesterday, several things have happened.
We’ve gotten a lot more details about the suspected Fourth Amendment and Attorney-Client privilege violations Jim Comey’s investigators committed. First, Rebekah Donaleski told Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick that Jim Comey’s team believed investigators had worked off material seized from Dan Richman that was not responsive to the four warrants used to investigate him. Effectively, a general warrant.
[D]id the agents preserve nonresponsive copies or nonresponsive materials for five years? Because the Fourth Circuit has said that’s not reasonable. Did that happen? Because the prolonged retention of nonresponsive electronic data can render an initially lawful search unconstitutional. The Fourth Circuit has said that. That’s what appears to have happened here.
[snip]
We need to know was this a narrowly tailored responsive set or did they just mark the entire iCloud responsive, thus rendering it a general warrant. We don’t know the answers to those questions.
Then, the FBI agent who realized he was reading privileged material described that he had been given the “full Cellebrite extraction” of Dan Richman’s phone to review, precisely that general warrant Donaleski feared. His supervisor said that the original agent had prepped the grand jury team with “a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017,” designed to avoid any taint. But Miles Starr appears to have presented eight pages of those texts to the grand jury; the Bates stamp for those texts include only a number, nothing to indicate they post-dated a privilege review by Richman.
After that, the Loaner AUSAs confessed that they had no fucking clue whether the material used to investigate Jim Comey had been scoped for responsiveness (though Comey’s team described that it looked like these were “raw returns for the search warrants at issue, unscoped for responsiveness and filtered for Mr. Richman’s privileges”).
The Order also required the government to provide, in writing, by the same deadline: “Confirmation of whether the Government has divided the materials searched pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 warrants at issue into materials that are responsive and non-responsive to those warrants, and, if so, a detailed explanation of the methodology used to make that determination; A detailed explanation of whether, and for what period of time, the Government has preserved any materials identified as non-responsive to the four search warrants; A description identifying which materials have been identified as responsive, if any; and A description identifying which materials have previously been designated as privileged.” ECF No. 161 at 1-2.
Despite certifying on November 6 that it had complied with the Court’s Order, ECF No. 163, the government did not provide this information until the evening of November 9, 2025, in response to a defense inquiry. The government told the defense that it “does not know” whether there are responsive sets for the first, third, and fourth warrants, or whether it has produced those to the defense, and said that in that regard, “we are still pulling prior emails” and the “agent reviewed the filtered material through relativity but there appears to be a loss of data that we are currently trying to restore.”
Then, in one of their response briefs, the government effectively threw out half their evidence, including all the texts from Richman’s phone.
At the earlier hearing, Fitzpatrick warned the government not to use any violative material.
THE COURT: The Court authorized you to search and to seize, or to seize primarily, a very specific subset of information; that’s it. It’s the government’s burden to comply with that court order. You need to confidently explain to me how you have done that. You need to confidently explain how you have complied strictly with the Court’s order. If you can do that, then I suspect that that narrow window of time, you probably still can review, at least pending the outcome of the other motions.
He even ordered them not to review any materials seized from those search warrants until further order of the Court.
ORDERED that the Government, including any of its agents or employees, shall not review any of the materials seized pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 search warrants at issue until further order of the Court;
In the middle of this, Comey argued that if Halligan presented unlawfully seized material to the grand jury, then Pam Bondi’s review of the grand jury materials — the first one, on October 31 — might also constitute a violation of Comey’s Fourth Amendment.
2 Concerns about taint arising from the improper use of potentially privileged and unconstitutionally-obtained materials are heightened because of the government’s continued use of the materials obtained pursuant to the warrants and grand jury transcripts. On October 31, 2025, the Attorney General purported to ratify the indictment based on her review of the grand jury proceedings. ECF No. 137-1 at 2-3. If that review entailed further improper use of privileged or unconstitutionally-obtained materials insofar as they were presented to the grand jury, it casts further doubt on the propriety of the government’s conduct of this case. The government produced the grand jury materials on November 5, 2025 to Judge Currie for in camera review, and thus could quickly produce the same materials to the defense. See ECF No. 158.
So to sum up so far: Jim Comey said, you violated my Attorney-Client privilege and my Fourth Amendment rights. And it’s likely that when Pam Bondi reviewed that transcript where unlawfully seized materials were presented, she did too.
And then Pam Bondi — after her Counselor assured Judge Currie that Halligan is closely supervised — reviewed the grand jury transcripts again.
The ones that likely rely on unlawfully seized materials.
I’ve now listened to over an hour and a half of Marcy laying out the cases today… danke sehr. The f-bombs work because of the detailed analysis and commentary.
If this is not appropriate, Rayne will delete it… but:
i wrote a song about everything discussed here, in the spirit of Savage librarian… and i wished some good musicians would record it.
They said sure, but you have to sing it. That’s crazy, said i. But i wanted to at least get a demo out, so i sung it. I’m sure some of the folk here will get a kick out of it.
Hopefully emptywheel as well.
https://soundcloud.com/ global-village-idiots/amurkan-liars-dice-demo
only used one f-bomb:
you think you’ve won you fuckin’ bastard
as you force climate disaster
i also sang: you sent her to her doom, just because she had a womb
i hope it’s ok to do this… and i hope it resonates here.
Onward Marcy!
I checked it out – pretty cool!
“amurkan liars dice”
danke sehr, punster
it is pretty cool isn’t it…
O my . . .
In my youth, I was an exchange student in (West) Germany, and toward the end of my time there, the city had a huge music festival. The whole center of town was turned into a pedestrian-only zone (save for the streetcars) and filled with music stages. One of the acts I came across was from England, doing 18th and 19th century American folk songs. Go figure. When they noticed me singing along from the audience, they really caught fire – “there’s someone here who *really* gets it!”
Your song brought that all back to mind, as I can envision some folk group singing that song a century from now as they bring to their audience the “Verrücktedeness” of these days.
Vielen Dank!!!
thanks so much Peterr…
Bremen still has a free summer music festival along the banks of the Weser River; 5 days, 4-5 stages, 200 thousand visitors. Breminale!
some really great, diverse music… picture music tents, food pavilions, bier wagons on the flats of the flood plain; thousands sitting on the inclined dykes.
if people are actually singing Liars Dice in a hundred years, that would signal a real plus for COP 30; not sure if this “civilization” is up for it.
aber Danke sehr, vielen Dank… Onward! Weiter!
While i’m waiting to see if my post linking my song Amurkan Liars Dice on soundcloud posts, i’m just going to say once again thanks Marcy for the decades.
Onward!
Oh… and it’a already 20:00 here in Deutschland, so i’m drinking 2015 Le Sacre, Saint Emilion… and doing what i can to stop this all.
every day there is so much of value here to digest. danke sehr.
It’s the kind of thing that happens when one stuffs slime under a rock, because it oozes out somewhere else for someone to find. In the present case, the true questions are whether the court will allow it (probably not, but might find ways to get everything into the open before dismissing with prejudice) or the courtier press will report it truthfully instead of bothsidesing it (doubtful, especially given the NYT reporter ’embedded’ with Epstein).
Should “Since” be “Between” in this?
Sure, TY
Whitaker’s response is now, in addition to overly semantic (for an attorney!!!) also really stupid own-goal. To ratify the Statute of Limitations restricted indictment and to “closely supervise” the (colorably) suspiciously appointed attorneys, Bondi now taints all such attorneys.
“Blondes from Florida” is an insult to to lots of self-described bimbos and a few Florida drivers, too. Their law licenses will depend on Senate appointments going forward.
I REALLY don’t like emphasizing their blondness, but the two together are epically stupid.
Need to work on a signifier that makes clear they are embarrassments to Florida Woman.
The Florida Howlers.
Fire Pissants
Creepos Peepshows
Pedos Speedos
Qatar Cutouts
Speedos Torpedoes
So Trump has told Bondi “investigate only Democrats!” over Epstein and she is slavishly complying. Surely there’s no possible more evident proof of a top-down policy of selective and vindictive prosecution in operation than that confession-as-order…?
Probably depends on who the decision-makers are, no? (Deciderers?)
Trump seems to have forgotten that he himself was a registered Democrat during some of the relevant period. The GOP, never a natural fit for him, became his party of choice for the basest of reasons: he believed he could use them. And he was right.
The judges here have to be getting very tired of Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer and her Loaner AUSAs, as well as AG Bondi who seems quite happy to cover for them and urge them onward in their abuse of the legal system to attack those who criticize Trump.
This post only confirms what I said in the comments on the last post: Currie needs to call Bondi into her courtroom to have a little in-person, in public, under oath question and answer session.
would be very curious what kind of demeanor Bondi would manage inside that courtroom. she is so used to getting away with extreme arrogance it would be great to witness her having to choke that all down and attempt a modicum of professionalism.
I would LOVE to see that. Her behavior in front of the Senate has been beyond arrogant. She is a terrible, terrible person. And the idea that they are saying LIL is being “supervised closely” is completely disproven by all of their incompetence. It is just insulting.
I’m always glad to read here before I see other reports. Marcy, you are the best.
It wouldn’t be Currie to do it. It’d be Nachmanoff. But, yeah, Gerstein raised poss that Lindsey would be questioned given her (unsworn) declaration, but Bondi has made representations twice, once false.
I keep wondering why MJ Fitzpatrick hasn’t ruled, as Comey wanted a quick ruling so he could review the transcripts for a suppression motion on the 19th. I think there may be a broader concern that something Was Wrong in that presentment and what to do with it.
The longer MJF takes, the more the prosecution should be worried rather than Comey.
Wishful thinking probably, because with Trumpist disrespect for the Rule of Law so widespread, and the judiciary apparently constantly “straining mightily to produce a gnat” in the face of it all (as I guess they must), that just for once someone (or more) from among this lawless rabble should be Made to Pay. And very publicly withal.
They act with impunity because the pardons fly. It has to end somehow. Not one of the illicit Supremes ever rose to Bondi’s brazen performance in front of the Senate. Not KKKavanaugh, not even Thomas.
replying to bgThenNow . . .
A pardon will keep you out of federal prison, but it won’t preserve your license to practice law.
The AG is not required to be a lawyer, so does it really matter if she loses her law license?
… Savage Librarian says: November 16, 2025 at 7:36 pm
Maybe the AG should be required to be a lawyer with an active law license, like requiring a police chief to be properly certified. (One L.A. chief never was certified, and it was one of the things that led to him being fired.)
two rules were drilled into us when presenting cases. These are foundational to establish jurisdiction. The county/location where crime occurred must appear and there must be a record of a quorum. it would be hysterical if these were blown.
As you’ve elegantly pointed out, there may be several omissions and/or commissions that make her indictment(s) void ab initio. If so, that would preclude the possibility of prosecuting Comey and James for these non-crimes, and raise the possibility of needing to report Insurance Lawyer Lindsey to the VA and FL bars.
They may need to sort out the best rationales for those decisions, so as to survive the inevitable appeals to the S.Ct. and their timing. It would be a miscarriage of justice to leave the cases of Comey and James hanging for months or years while that plays out.
A pardon may not preserve your license to practice law, but you can still lobby and say legal things on Fox News for money.
Playing the grift card. It’s always available for this crowd, it seems.