24-04-2025
MAGA Is Aiming to Take Over the D.C. Bar. Be Afraid.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
In fewer than 100 days, the Trump administration has ignored judges, extorted law firms, and fired lawyers deemed insufficiently loyal to its cause. But one front in this war on the rule of law has received little attention, and it's an important one: Brad Bondi, the brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, is running to become president of the District of Columbia Bar. The bar is involved in administering the admission and discipline of some 120,000 attorneys in and out of government. If he were elected, would Bondi try to suspend or disbar those lawyers who stood in the president's—or his sister's—way?
Brad Bondi has assured us that this is not the case. 'This isn't about politics,' he said in a statement. His candidacy, he has promised, 'began months before the federal elections and has no connection with national politics at all.' Bondi's campaign platform is, admittedly, apolitical: He's proposed to expand free online continuing legal education programs, and to stop charging members for certificates of good standing.
These are perfectly fine goals, but would they really inspire a man like Brad Bondi to run for office? Bondi is the global co-chair of Paul Hastings' white-collar practice group—a weighty job—and in an interview last year he explained that he now 'allow[s] others to handle the business-as-usual legal matters' so that he can 'focus on defending against the true existential threats to clients.' The issues he is running on seem somewhat beneath his conception of himself. And while Bondi may be truly passionate about the breadth of online continuing legal education courses, it appears to be a newfound passion: Bondi has served in leadership roles in the bar, but according to his opponent, Diane Seltzer, has never actually served on the committee on continuing legal education.
Moreover, there are good reasons why an ally of the Trump administration might want to run the D.C. Bar. The organization doesn't directly investigate and punish bar members, but it does play a supporting role. For instance, the bar nominates candidates to the board that adjudicates lawyers' misconduct, and helps to set the board's budget. And while decisions to punish lawyers are ultimately made by the D.C. Court of Appeals (the District's equivalent of a state Supreme Court), the bar could simply ignore those orders, keeping on its rolls those members that it liked, and purging those that it did not.
Brad Bondi could not do this alone, though; he is joined by Alicia Long, who is running for bar treasurer. Long is a deputy to Ed Martin, who is President Donald Trump's interim D.C. U.S. attorney and, among other things, a frequent guest on Russian state media. While Bondi and Long would be far from forming a majority on the bar's board, those allied to Trump have shown that when it comes to reshaping institutions, they are willing to play a long game. If Bondi did get control of the bar's board, it could be a step toward changing the entire legal profession.
So one possibility is that Bondi is lying about why he's running. Another possibility is that he's telling the truth. 'The Bar has a non-partisan mission, which I intend to vigilantly protect against any push to politicize it,' Bondi wrote. This could be a promise to protect the bar from becoming a voice for the Trump administration; it could just as easily be a promise to protect the bar from becoming a voice against it. In countries facing illiberal or outright authoritarian governments, bar associations have often stood as credible, independent advocates for the rule of law. Under dictatorships in Spain and Brazil, for instance, bar associations channeled democratic ambitions and defended political prisoners. Here in America, mandatory bar associations have some limits on their right to advocate. But they ought to be able to speak out on issues germane to the legal profession, such as threats to the rule of law that people like Brad Bondi's sister pose.
Seen this way, Bondi's candidacy may be less about using the bar to silence enemies of the administration, but to silence the bar itself. This fits with the ambitions of Trump and those who surround him. The administration has, most prominently, attacked universities and law firms, but also medical journals, nonprofits, and, in fact, bar associations. These are institutions with the credibility to challenge the president, and for that reason, they pose a threat. Those surrounding the administration have telegraphed what they intend here. Curtis Yarvin, the court philosopher of Vice President J.D. Vance, complains that civil society is a form of 'distributed Orwellian despotism.' Randy Barnett, who is often on the vanguard of the conservative legal agenda, recently tweeted that banning nongovernmental organizations 'must be the new constitutional crusade to preserve our republican form of government.' People like Yarvin and Barnett aspire to hobble the institutions that might stand in the president's way. The president in turn is acting on those aspirations.
Fortunately, even if Bondi's candidacy is in fact part of a larger threat to civil society and democracy, neither civil society nor democracy are dead yet. Bondi and his ally Alicia Long both have opponents in the D.C. Bar election. And voting is open until June 4.
