U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi devised a scheme earlier this month to run cover for Department of Justice lawyers who face ethics investigations for how they do their jobs.

Bondi wants to hijack the processes that state bar associations use to conduct those investigations, with a proposed rule to allow the DOJ to step in to stall those probes for as long as she likes.

But first, Americans get a month to tell the attorney general what they think of her scheme. And Americans have plenty to say. More than 1 million people have posted comments on the Federal Register since Bondi's proposed DOJ rule change was posted March 5. And the 30-day comment period still has a week to go until the April 6 deadline.

Of the 1,038,423 comments posted as of March 30, just under 37,000 are now available for review. I breezed through many of them in the past week. They showed overwhelming opposition to Bondi's proposed rule change.

Somehow, Pam Bondi’s weird power grab isn’t popular

A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment while the regulatory process for Bondi's proposed rule is still underway. But there are plenty of former DOJ lawyers who have thoughts to share about this.

Justice Connection, a network for former DOJ staffers, in an essay published March 25 called the attorney general's proposed rule "a dubious legal power grab" and urged DOJ alumni to comment in opposition. The authors noted that a federal law "requires DOJ attorneys to satisfy the ethical requirements of the state in which they are licensed and the state in which they practice."

That's exactly what Bondi is trying to derail here, at a time when DOJ is being reprimanded by federal judges and investigated for ethics complaints for how she runs her department.

Amy Powell, litigation director for Lawyers for Good Government, recently ran a webinar in conjunction with the National Women's Law Center to advise on how to comment on Bondi's proposed rule. They also created a "comment template" to share that advice.

"This rule hits a little close to home," said Powell, who was a DOJ lawyer for two decades. "I believe quite firmly that DOJ attorneys are and should be held to a higher standard than the rest are, not a lower standard."

Powell told me it is important for lawyers who have specific insight into the processes of ethics investigation to comment on the proposed rule.

The comments that can be read online show some signs of a cut-and-paste effort, with some commenters using boilerplate language floating around on social media and in blog posts.

Powell prefers solid legal arguments in the comments, though she understands why some people take the shortcut.

"I would never tell people not to comment," Powell said. "But substantive comments can both force them to consider the real problems with the proposed rule, and, if nothing else, can gum up the works."

What 'substantive' comments could force the DOJ to do

Steven Balla, an associate professor of political science at The George Washington University who studies transparency in policymaking, told me the volume of comments ‒ at more than 1 million ‒ for Bondi's proposal is unusual but not unheard of.

Bondi has gone "viral" with some other hot topics, like proposed rules to deal with climate change, clean air and water and other environmental issues, Balla said. Commenters can simply express an opinion or a preference, but he told me its more effective to make a "substantive" comment based on evidence, legal matters or technical details.

"From a legal point of view, agency decision-making isn't a vote-counting exercise," Balla said. "So agencies are not supposed to make decisions on the basis of how many pro versus con comments they get."

A spokesperson for the U.S. General Services Administration told me in an email that "not every comment is made publicly available" on the Federal Register's website when a rule is proposed. That includes duplicates or "examples of a mass-mail campaign," according to the agency's website.

Time will tell if the DOJ or the advocates who oppose Bondi's rule will win the messaging war here. The advocates are certainly well in the lead for that victory.

"If the comments run largely in favor of the proposed rule, agencies love to give that kind of score-carding," Balla said. "When it runs against them, which it is here, obviously there's less of an incentive to do that."

Either way, the DOJ will produce a summary of the responses and must engage with substantive comments, he said, or risk losing the rule altogether.

"If they're deemed by the courts not to have sufficiently engaged with the comments, their rule can be revoked," Balla said. "And so agencies typically will release very, very long, detailed responses to comment documents."

I'll follow up when that happens. But for now, study up on Bondi's proposed rule and then head over to the Federal Register and let her hear what you think about it while you still have time.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan.

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