Attorney General to target hate speech

Post Reply New Topic

Attorney General Pam Bondi faced bipartisan backlash Tuesday over her comments that the Justice Department "will absolutely target" anyone who targets others with "hate speech" in the wake of the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Bondi made the comments in a podcast interview with Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

"There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society," Bondi said.

"Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people so we show them some action is better than no action?" Miller asked in response.

"We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech -- and that's across the aisle," Bondi responded.

Bondi's comments quickly gained traction across social media, with some users replying with a 2024 post from Charlie Kirk, in which he wrote: "Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free."

"Someone needs to explain to Ms. Bondi that so-called 'hate speech,' repulsive though it may be, is protected by the First Amendment. She should know this," conservative commentator Brit Hume wrote on X.

Bondi issued a defiant statement from her X account on Tuesday morning in response to mounting backlash.

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

You cannot call for someone's murder. You cannot swat a Member of Congress. You cannot dox a conservative family and think it will be brushed off as 'free speech.' These acts are punishable crimes, and every single threat will be met with the full force of the law," Bondi wrote.

"Free speech protects ideas, debate, even dissent but it does NOT and will NEVER protect violence. It is clear this violent rhetoric is designed to silence others from voicing conservative ideals," she posted.

In a separate interview on Fox News' "Hannity" on Monday evening, Bondi also suggested she has directed the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to "prosecute" businesses that refuse to print Kirk's pictures for vigils. It is not clear what criminal statute would be relevant in that instance.

Bondi's comments come as President Donald Trump and other senior White House officials have repeatedly said they would use the Justice Department in the wake of Kirk's assassination to explicitly target left wing groups.

During Trump's first administration, Justice Department officials repeatedly resisted attempts by Trump and the White House to designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization -- a move they described as "highly problematic" and which would likely run afoul of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment protects the rights of Americans who like spewing "hateful speech" and "assembling with others who share the same hateful views," so "unless an organization engages solely in unprotected activity, such as committing crimes of violence, any designation of a (U.S.-based) organization as a terrorist organization … would likely run afoul of the First Amendment," Mary McCord, the former head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, told a House panel in January of 2020.

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, President Donald Trump and his allies have threatened to bring the weight of the federal government against what they refer to as the “radical left.”

“It is a vast domestic terror movement,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser, said Monday.

“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” he added. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”

But the suggestion that a secret network of violent left-wing extremists was behind the killing stands in contrast to the evidence that law enforcement officials presented on Tuesday in Utah, where Kirk was fatally shot. There was no indication presented Tuesday that the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was a member of a group or that he fell under the sway of a particular leader. The investigation is ongoing.

Experts told NBC News that the Trump administration appears to be using Kirk’s assassination as an excuse to crack down on left-wing individuals and groups. While administration officials have yet to detail their plans, statements by Miller and others raise questions of who exactly would be targeted, how, and what effect this might have in stifling political dissent.

“When I see terms like disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks, the question is — Is it a criminal network that’s plotting crimes?” said Anthony Cangelosi, a former Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security agent. “If they are, then disrupt and dismantle them. We don’t just disrupt or dismantle organizations that we disagree with.”

Trump swept into office in January vowing to exact revenge on his perceived enemies. His administration has already taken action against universities, law firms, prominent Democrats and FBI agents who worked on the Jan. 6 investigations, to name a few.

But a new crackdown along the lines of what Miller has proposed is raising fears among some civil liberties groups and political experts that the administration is ramping up its efforts to punish or silence critics.

“The administration’s signaling that it intends to use the assassination of Charlie Kirk as justification for targeting the political left is the least surprising outcome of this tragedy, ” said David Viola, a professor at John Jay College in New York and author of “You Have Unleashed a Storm,” a new book on political violence during the 1960s.

He noted that the move has “scary echoes in our not too distant past,” referencing the actions of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover to target left-leaning groups and figures like Martin Luther King.

“The truth is, we have a crisis of political violence in the United States today — not a crisis of ‘radical left’ political violence or ‘radical right’ political violence,” Viola added. “Amplifying one aspect of the crisis while pretending the other doesn’t exist will only cause the spiral to worsen.”

Since 2002, right-wing ideologies have fueled more than 70% of all extremist attacks and domestic terror plots in the U.S., according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The Justice Department itself noted in a 2024 study that the number of far-right attacks in the U.S. continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. The study was removed from the Justice Department website in the past few days, according to 404 Media.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment about the removal of the study or the details of its plan to target left-wing groups.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said left-wing organizations have “fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more.”

“The Trump administration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities,” Jackson added. “This effort will target those committing criminal acts and hold them accountable.”

The killing of Kirk, a hugely popular conservative activist who is credited with helping Trump win the 2024 election, has convulsed an already deeply polarized America.

Kirk built a massive following, particularly among young Republicans, who flocked to his events on college campuses where he engaged in live debates with students. He was a divisive figure who also drew sharp criticism for statements considered racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, antisemitic and against transgender people.

The Trump administration has shifted FBI agents and others to focus on immigration and other priorities. Trump also pardoned those who participated in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

“It’s really hard to take this seriously when all the people who attacked the Capitol were pardoned,” said Daniel Richman, professor of law at Columbia University and a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Richman said it would be difficult for the Trump administration to carry out the type of sweeping crackdown on what it calls left-wing organizations. “It’s very hard to get it right when, on the one hand, you’re recognizing First Amendment rights and, on the other, recognizing that sometimes people act on their threats.”

The cases that get prosecuted and upheld generally involve a specific threat to harm others, Richman said.

"Violent rhetoric has a regrettably long history in the United States, and a lot of it is protected by the First Amendment," he added. "Context, specificity and the intent of the speaker matter a lot."

A former senior Justice Department official said that defense lawyers would likely urge judges to dismiss charges if the DOJ prosecutes people from one side of the political spectrum and not the other. He said they could argue that prosecutors are engaging in "selective prosecution" and not applying the law equally.

"If a left-wing troll makes a death threat online or by phone, it’s a federal crime," said the former official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of retribution. “That’s also true if a right-wing troll does it.”

Some foreign affairs experts likened the Trump administration’s threats to actions taken by authoritarian leaders abroad.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has carried out a long-running campaign to tarnish the reputation of civil society groups -- including those supported by George Soros -- and to try to choke off their funding.

If the Trump administration tries to prosecute nonprofit groups as “terrorist” organizations, that would represent a step beyond even what Hungary’s government has pursued and resemble more draconian measures adopted by Russia, according to Peter Kreko, an academic and director of the Political Capital Institute, an independent policy research center based in Budapest.

Such a move would mean following "the hardcore authoritarian playbook," Kreko said. "That’s a different kind of toolkit, and I would say it’s a more dangerous toolkit.

This is how free societies come to an end.

The irony is that the MAGAs claim that the left wants to imprison people for using the wrong pronoun, reciting Leviticus 18, etc.

it is time to get your passports ready if one is at all possible to escape this sinking ship. this same group of psychopaths in the administration has threatened to revoke the passports of anybody whose politics they don't like meaning anybody not a maga.

No offense meant buddy but personally I think this mindset is what's truly wrong with the US. The moment things have gone bad for us instead of fighting tyranny tooth and claw we instead talk about getting passports and leaving for what we imagine to be greener pastures in other countries (countries that don't even want to take in American refugees unless they're rich celebrities mind you).

I get that the growing fascism of the right and the self-demoralizing of the left have made this country seem like it's not even worth fighting for anymore, but if we truly don't want things to be so bad or worse than they are now here we gotta stand our ground and fight for a better country. Which also means calling out the BS when we see it even when it feels like everyone is against us.

That's how it should work. But unfortunately, those Anti-Nazi Germans who stayed in their country to fight Hitler ended up dead or in concentration camps. That's not to denigrate those brave enough to stay behind and fight fascism.

^^^
My family is very German on both sides, so I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for those Germans who were never duped by the Nazis.

In addition to having Polynesian ancestry on my dad's side (Hawaiian and Filipino) I also have German and Irish on my Mom's side.

That combined with the fact that I'm from Georgia, the state that is ostracized for its racism and slavery (not to mention poverty and poor education, you know all the good things Red States are hated for) and kinda like Germany had civilian cities that were deliberately attacked and destroyed by the invading armies during Sherman's March...

I guess I just have a different perspective on the "bad" countries that lose wars. It's not that I support Nazi genocide or Confederate racism and slavery. I despise that stuff. But coming from that kind of background I can't help but have sympathy for the Devil. Because I sorta know what it's like to be judged harshly for coming from that background even though I would have never supported it myself.

It's wrong to judge ordinary people for the actions of their government. Osama Bin Laden justified killing civilians in New York because of his beef with the US government.