‘Full-on Existential Crisis’: CNN’s Elie Honig Warns That DOJ Is Becoming a ‘Political Tool’ Complete With ‘Handcuffs and Guns’

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig warned that the Department of Justice is facing a a “full-on existential crisis” over Main Justice’s demand that the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams be dropped in a searing new column for New York Magazine.

“After days of publicly-broadcast internecine smashdowns, the Adams case has mushroomed into a full-on existential crisis for the Justice Department,” wrote Honig before excoriating his “friend and former colleague,” Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, for justifying his order to drop the charges against Adams for explicitly political reasons.

Honig praised “our story’s heroes,” namely former Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and her team, for refusing to carry out Bove’s order before asking “Where the hell is Pam Bondi in this?”

He continued:

(You know: the new attorney general of the United States.) Apparently she’s been gliding along, blithely half-aware of this case, as if it was some story she had glanced at on the internet rather than a crisis inside her own house. When asked midweek why the Adams case had not yet been dismissed despite Bove’s instruction, she responded, “I did not know that it had not been dropped yet.” (That’s funny because I did, and I’m not the attorney general of the United States.) And in a Fox News appearance, Bondi again deflected, noting defensively that she was in a different time zone. (I’m not sure she fully understands how time zones work. All the same stuff is actually happening, it’s just that the clocks say slightly different things where you are; it’s not like you enter some alternate reality.) Either Bondi has a management problem (if she doesn’t know what’s going on) or a discipline problem (if Bove is tearing down the house on his own accord).

Honig went on to indict DOJ leadership for embracing “a policy that it’s perfectly valid to base prosecution decisions on the political inclinations of the subject” and submit that “The mind boggles at the implications. Governor gets indicted for tax fraud but he’s on board with a Democratic president’s anti-gun initiatives: free pass. Senator gets charged for bribery but she’s supportive of a Republican administration’s efforts to decrease foreign aid: case dismissed. Cop gets nabbed for excessive force and civil rights violations but we need him out on the streets to help with the president’s efforts to combat drug trafficking: charges dropped.”

“Presidents have enormous power to reward and punish other public officials for their support or opposition to the administration’s policies. That’s politics,” he concluded. “But prosecution must be off the table, as Scotten powerfully reminded Bove. Otherwise, DOJ becomes just another political tool, only with agents who carry handcuffs and guns.”

Honig is not the only one to condemn the Trump administration over its handling of the Adams case. Conservative legal commentator and Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy has been extremely critical of DOJ’s actions, most recently in a column in which he observed that the department is focused on settling “the president’s scores” and rewriting ” dark chapters of his history.”

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