A few days after she announced that the Trump administration will seek the death penalty against alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sat down for an interview with Fox News Sunday, where she was asked to respond to fears that the country is in a constitutional crisis. Her answer was predictable. The real constitutional crisis, Bondi said, is the barrage of legal challenges to Trump’s agenda.

“The president is going to comply with the law,” Bondi insisted before making clear that the law is irrelevant in the face of Trump’s mission to Make America Safe Again. Her Department of Justice had just indefinitely suspended a federal prosecutor who admitted in court that there was no evidence against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man exiled to a Salvadoran prison as a result of an “administrative error” — and whose continued imprisonment was decried by a federal judge as “wholly lawless.” To Bondi, the real problem was the prosecutor. “He shouldn’t have taken the case,” she told the Fox News host. “He shouldn’t have argued it if that’s what he was going to do.”

In other words, DOJ prosecutors must fall in line or pay the consequences.

The exchange was a chilling glimpse of what lies on the horizon when it comes to Trump’s broader priorities. As Trump revamps the DOJ to better suit his agenda, the decision to seek death against Mangione reflects his long-standing desire to ramp up capital punishment. In an executive order immediately following his inauguration, Trump proclaimed his intention to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.” As Bondi told the Fox News host, “We’re gonna seek the death penalty whenever possible.”

Mangione, 26, is facing trial in three different jurisdictions for the murder of Brian Thompson last December. In addition to state charges in New York and Pennsylvania, Mangione is being prosecuted in the Southern District of New York based on federal gun laws and the allegation that he crossed state lines to stalk and kill Thompson. Although lawyers on both sides have said that Mangione will be tried first in state court, it’s possible this could change. In a statement earlier this month, defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo argued that “Luigi is caught in a high-stakes game of tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors, except the trophy is a young man’s life.”

It’s too soon to tell what Mangione’s case might reveal about Trump’s pursuit of death sentences going forward. But Mangione’s lawyers argue that Bondi has trampled the usual process. In a motion filed April 11, they asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from seeking death against their client, citing its lawless conduct in the Abrego Garcia case. “These are not normal times,” they wrote.

“One of my biggest questions is whether the Department of Justice followed its own policies in making this........

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