Pam Bondi Dropped Cases against Four Alleged Drug Dealers So She Could Hunt Don Lemon [View all]
https://emptywheel.net/pam-bondi-freed-four-alleged-drug-dealers-so-she-could-hunt-don-lemon/
Before Donald Trump started an illegal war against Iran, DOJ superseded the indictment against Don Lemon and others, adding 30 new alleged co-conspirators. Pam Bondi did so at the opportunity cost of keeping Minnesotans safe.
In the 37 days between when she originally charged Nekima Levy Armstrong and two other people on January 20 and the February 26 indictment, Bondi's DOJ dropped a number of cases against allegedly serious criminals and kept hundreds of HSI agents in Minnesota, effectively choosing to pursue Lemon (as Harmeet Dhillon rashly boasted to Megyn Kelly), "to the end of the earth" rather than those serious crimes. But, based on the new indictment, Bondi has still not found much evidence that the Cities Church protesters intended to deprive members of the Cities Church of their right to worship, which would be needed to convict on a Conspiracy against Rights case.
While DOJ was hunting Don Lemon, it dropped four drug prosecutions
Start with the opportunity cost of rounding up all 39 protestors.
Pam Bondi's DOJ has been letting allegedly dangerous defendants, including drug dealers, go free. Both the Star Tribune and the AP have covered the number of criminal cases that Minnesota's US Attorney's office has dropped in the face of staffing shortages and the flood of immigration habeas cases created by Stephen Miller's invasion of Minnesota.
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At its height, DHS had one in ten of HSI's 7,100 officers nationwide deployed to Minnesota. When you pull that many people into immigration surges, you pull them off their day jobs investigating things like child sex trafficking and other kinds of transnational trafficking.
And to the extent that the Administration used these surged HSI officers to track down the 30 defendants they had not originally charged, it means other crimes, crimes like child sex trafficking, are not getting investigated.
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