After being roundly criticized for her stunningly wrong (legally and politically, judging from Republican reactions) claim that “hate speech” isn’t protected under the First Amendment, Attorney General Pam Bondi attempted to weasel her way out by arguing that “hate speech” that “crosses the line into threats of violence” are crimes under 18 USC § 875(e). That, too, was wrong, as explained by Aaron Terr and Angel Eduardo of FIRE.

Early this morning, Bondi published a post on X, attempting to clarify her comments after a wave of negative response. Unfortunately, she only introduced more confusion:

Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over….

However, Bondi quickly shows that she doesn’t understand [the] narrow [true threats] exception, which doesn’t cover abstract advocacy of violence or “cheering on” political violence — speech that is, in fact, protected.

And yet, that was hardly the most flagrant display of ignorance about the law by Bondi that day.

The Hill (Ashleigh Fields) reports:

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday said the Justice Department was investigating an incident involving a Michigan Office Depot employee who refused to print flyers advertising a vigil for conservative activist Charlie Kirk…. Office Depot said last week they removed the employee responsible for denying the order placed by the Kalamazoo County Republican Party.

Here’s the Bondi quote, from Hannity on Fox, starting about 4:42:

Businesses cannot discriminate. If you wanna go in and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that. But I have Harmeet Dhillon right now in our Civil Rights unit looking at that immediately, that Office Depot had done that. We’re looking at that.

The MAGA faithful immediately leapt to the Masterpiece Cake case, analogizing the copying of a poster with the baking of a cake. While it’s understandable that non-lawyers would lack the capacity to distinguish between discrimination on the basis of sex and discrimination on the basis of political viewpoint, the former being prohibited and the latter not, Pam Bondi cannot be so easily forgiven.

Bondi is the Attorney General of the United States. Bondi was the Attorney General of Florida. Bondi is a lawyer. Bondi does not get a pass to spew legal nonsense as if she was a clueless lay partisan.

Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination by certain places of public accommodation—such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, and places of public amusement—based on race, [color,] religion, and national origin. But it doesn’t ban discrimination based on political views, and it doesn’t apply to retailers, so it wouldn’t apply here. It also bans discrimination based on disability, but that’s not applicable here either.  Businesses can discriminate, just not on bases that the law forbids; and here, federal law doesn’t appear to forbid this sort of discrimination.

These are the sort of details that distinguish the way a lawyer analyzes a fact pattern as opposed to the superficial views of the public. It’s critical for lawyers not to make people stupider by ignoring the salient law and spewing nonsense instead. Sadly, Bondi is a lawyer. Sadly, that did not prevent Bondi from spewing nonsense and making people stupider.

According to the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States, which used to be the attorney general but has since been replaced by the unitary executive, the Trump administration is embarking on a war against his political opponents grounded in speech, as asserted by AG Bondi (hey, she’s the lawyer).

In the six days since Mr. Kirk was gunned down in Utah, Mr. Trump and his top officials have promised a broadside against the political left, indicating that they would go after liberal groups like George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation; revoke visas for people seen to be “celebrating” Mr. Kirk’s death; begin federal investigations into hate speech; and designate certain groups domestic terrorists.

Trump commenced a defamation suit against the New York Times and four reporters for being mean to him and endorsing Kamala Harris for president, asking for $15 billion in damages to his reputation. While the suit is frivolous, at least it’s merely a civil suit. What Bondi seems to promise is that there will be federal prosecutions against the enemies of the Trumpian state as well.

While such prosecutions are unlikely to be any less legally frivolous, the old saying kicks in: You can beat the rap, but not the ride. And no doubt this lawlessness and legal stupidity will receive the applause of the MAGA faithful, because like their woke mirror images, they care only about the outcome of destroying their enemies and nothing about the law or Constitution.