JUDGE JUDY HAS SOME WORDS FOR PAM BONDI

MOSTLY SATIRE

The following is a work of satire. Judge Judith Sheindlin has no connection to this piece and did not say any of this.

THE HONORABLE JUDITH SHEINDLIN:

Ms. Bondi. Sit down. SIT. DOWN. I didn’t ask you to stand there and arrange yourself, I asked you to sit down, and when I ask you something in this courtroom you do it, because this is MY courtroom, and I can say what I want in it, and when you become a judge WE WILL TALK. Until that day — which, given your track record, is never — you sit, you listen, and you speak when I point at you.

ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? Because I’m only going to say this once. I have been doing this since before you figured out that a blowout and a practiced smile could substitute for a spine in the state of Florida, and I have approximately zero patience left for whatever this is that you are doing with your face. Byrd — Byrd — is she smiling? She’s smiling at me. Ms. Bondi, I am not a donor. I am not a Republican fundraiser in Tallahassee. I am not a Mar-a-Lago reception where the minimum buy-in is three thousand dollars.

I am a JUDGE. The smile doesn’t work here. NOTHING works here except the truth, and from what I have seen of your career, you and the truth have been estranged for so long that I’m not sure you’d recognize it if it knocked on your door and left a forwarding address.

Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining, Ms. Bondi. I know what rain feels like. I know what this feels like. And this is not rain.

Now. We are here today because Keith Ellison — the Attorney General of the great state of Minnesota, a man who has spent his entire professional life doing things the right way, through proper channels, using his words like a grown-up — Keith Ellison, Mary Moriarty, and Drew Evans walked into federal court and sued you. They sued YOU. The Attorney General of the United States. Because you — you — are hiding evidence in the shooting deaths of Minnesota residents.

Renee Good.

Alex Pretti.

In the weeks that followed, your department told the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension that it would not be sharing anything. Not a photograph. Not a report. Not a napkin. Nothing.

Do you know what I call that, Ms. Bondi? I call that baloney.

You want me to believe that the Department of Justice, which is supposed to be interested in justice, is withholding evidence from state investigators because of institutional integrity? That’s your argument? THAT? The questions, Ms. Bondi, are going to get harder.

I eat liars for breakfast. I want you to know that about me. I’ve been eating them since 1965 and I have never once gone hungry, because there has never been a shortage. You, however — YOU are a four-course meal. You are a buffet. You are the all-you-can-eat Sunday special with the little chocolate fountain at the end.

And, don't even get me started on your handling of the Epstein Files. You were handed six million pages. Congress said: release them. You released three million, declared the other three million “duplicative” — I don’t even know what that means in this context and I don’t think YOU know what it means in this context — and in the process you exposed dozens of victims. Their NAMES. In documents.

During your recent infanous appearance before Congress, survivors were in the room, Ms. Bondi. Sitting right behind you. Women who were children when Epstein did what he did. And a congressman asked you — point blank, no tricks, one simple question — how many of Epstein’s co-conspirators have you indicted?

And do you know what you said? DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU SAID?

You said the Dow was over fifty thousand.

I have been on this bench for a long time. I have heard a man tell me his dog ate the lease. I have heard a woman deny sending texts I was holding in my actual hand. I have heard a contractor bill for work he was physically incapacitated from performing because he was IN JAIL. And not one of them — NOT ONE — looked at survivors and said the STOCK MARKET was going well.

Beauty fades, Ms. Bondi. Dumb is forever. But what you did in that hearing room wasn’t dumb. Dumb I could work with. What you did was cruel, and it was calculated, and it was the move of someone who has spent so long performing accountability that she has entirely forgotten what the real thing looks like.

Don't spit on my cupcake and call it frosting, Pamela.

You said — and I watched the tape, don’t look surprised, I do my homework — you said “I don’t know why you’re laughing.” You said that. To a room full of people who were laughing because the alternative was weeping. That’s why they were laughing. I’ve been in courtrooms with people in pain my entire career. I know what that laugh sounds like. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Now. Here is what is going to happen today, and I want you to listen to me very carefully because I am only going to say it once and I am not going to repeat myself and Byrd is not going to repeat it for me and there is no appeals process from what I am about to tell you.

You. Are going. To produce. The evidence.

All of it. Every document, every photograph, every report your agents generated from the moment they arrived at those scenes in Minneapolis. You are going to produce it to Keith Ellison. You are going to produce it to Mary Moriarty. You are going to produce it to Drew Evans and the BCA. You are going to do it promptly, you are going to do it completely, and you are going to do it without any further letters, without any further process arguments, without any further invocations of federal authority as a synonym for federal impunity, because I have heard enough, and the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have waited long enough.

You say no, I say yes. I win. I’m the judge.

You’re going to be crying before this is over.

Don’t smile at me on your way out.

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