Trump is no longer just venting about political enemies — he’s openly ordering his attorney general to take them down. In a weekend social media blitz, the president told Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute some of his fiercest rivals: New York Attorney General Letitia James, California Senator Adam Schiff, and former FBI Director James Comey.
The demand isn’t subtle. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, pressing Bondi to launch indictments immediately. He called them “guilty as hell,” while attacking prosecutors who have balked at pursuing charges.
The Loyalty Test President
The flashpoint came after Trump forced out Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney overseeing a mortgage fraud probe into James. Siebert had told the Department of Justice there wasn’t enough evidence to make the case. Trump disagreed — and publicly claimed he fired him for being a “woke RINO” unwilling to do his job.
Trump then announced his replacement: Lindsey Halligan, a former beauty queen, White House aide, and long-time Trump loyalist who once defended him in the classified-documents scandal. Her appointment signals less a pursuit of justice than an attempt to weaponize the DOJ as an instrument of personal revenge.
The Enemies List Redux
This isn’t new Trumpian theater. Schiff, James, and Comey have long occupied Trump’s enemies list. Schiff led Trump’s first impeachment. James won a half-billion-dollar civil fraud judgment against him (later overturned on appeal). Comey, of course, ran the FBI’s Russia investigation before Trump fired him. It’s personal.
What makes this moment alarming is the brazenness. Trump isn’t even pretending the DOJ is independent. He’s issuing direct instructions — in public — that his attorney general punish adversaries. And he’s firing career prosecutors who insist on evidence first. In Canada, where even premiers hesitate to opine on police probes, this kind of behavior would be unimaginable. Our legal system is deliberately siloed from political meddling. Trump’s America is heading the opposite direction.
Why This Matters Globally
In democracies, the justice system is built on legitimacy as much as law. Once leaders treat prosecutors as political attack dogs, trust corrodes. Hungary under Viktor Orbán and Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have followed this path: weaponized prosecutions, neutered institutions, surveillance of opponents. Trump seems intent on importing that model into the U.S. at full speed.
For voters, the question isn’t whether they like James, Schiff, or Comey — it’s whether they want a justice system that bends to the whims of one man. If the president can fire prosecutors for not indicting his rivals, then prosecutorial independence — one of democracy’s last guardrails — is gone.
The Bigger Picture
Trump’s defenders will say: Obama’s DOJ investigated Republicans too. True. But there’s a canyon of difference between an independent investigation landing on partisan figures and a president ordering his AG to press charges despite weak or nonexistent evidence.
The U.S. has had scandals before — Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” Bush’s DOJ firings. But Trump’s overt public directives mark a level of authoritarian audacity rarely seen in modern American politics. He makes the subtext the headline.
And here’s the kicker: he can do it precisely because Bondi seems willing to play along. She hasn’t resigned. She hasn’t contradicted him. Silence, in this case, is complicity.
Final Take
Pam Bondi now holds one of the most consequential decisions of her career: either uphold the independence of the Department of Justice, or cement her role in Trump’s vendetta machine. For the rest of us — Canadians watching from north of the border included — it’s a litmus test on whether America can still pretend to be a rule-of-law state rather than a rule-of-Trump one.