So is Pam Bondi willing to be another John Mitchell?

Trump is worried that Attorney General Pam Bondi is moving too slowly to prosecute his political adversaries on fake charges. Trump has good reason to be concerned. He is carrying out his project to consolidate authoritarian power against the trend of declining public support for his administration and himself…

Autocracies are headed by one man but require the cooperation of many others. Some collaborators may sincerely share the autocrat’s goals, but opportunists provide a crucial margin of support. In the United States, such people now have to make a difficult calculation: Do the present benefits of submitting to Trump’s will outweigh the future hazards?

As Bondi makes her daily decisions about whether to abuse her powers to please Trump, she has to begin with one big political assessment: Will Trump ultimately retain the power to reward and punish her? It’s not just about keeping her present job. On the one hand, people in Trump’s favor can make a lot of money from their proximity to power. On the other, Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, served 19 months in prison for his crimes during Watergate. If Trump’s hold on power loosens, Bondi could share Mitchell’s fate.

Fingers crossed!

Shortly after MSNBC reported that Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, had accepted $50,000 in cash from FBI agents posing as businessmen last year, allegedly in exchange for a promise to help secure government contracts, the pro-Trump podcaster Megyn Kelly posted “We DO NOT CARE.” This kind of acquiescence to corruption has been one of Trump’s most important resources. But the American people become a lot less tolerant of corruption in their leaders when they feel themselves under economic pressure.

Well, that’s all very nice. The “border czar” takes bribes. Prominent journalists tells us we do not care. This “go right ahead, we don’t mind” approach is why we’re stuck with Trump. It starts to wobble only when it hits our own wallets. What lovely people we must be.

Trump has a shrewd instinct for survival. He must sense that if he does not act now to prevent free-and-fair elections in 2026, he will lose much of his power—and all of his impunity. That’s why he is squeezing Bondi. But for her, the thought process must be very different. Trump is hoping to offload culpability for his misconduct onto her. She’s the one most directly at risk if she gives orders later shown to be unethical or illegal.

The survival of American rights and liberties may now turn less on the question of whether Pam Bondi is a person of integrity—which we already know the dismal answer to—than whether she is willing to risk her career and maybe even her personal freedom for a president on his way to repudiation unless he can fully pervert the U.S. legal system and the 2026 elections.

It’s gonna be a bumpy 14 months.