Devlin Barrett

If you worked for me, you would have been fired.

She is adamant that no crime was committed, and she basically goes on the attack and just criticizes the lawmakers who are even asking the question.

In the same vein, just this past weekend, the vice president, J.D.

Vance, is interviewed by ABC's George Stephanopoulos, and he's asked again about Tom Holman and the bag of cash.

Vance's answer is very similar to Bondi's.

The question is, did he do something illegal?

And there's absolutely no evidence that Tom Holman has ever taken a bribe with anything illegal, which is why he's working in the administration.

He insists no crime was committed and, again, goes on the attack for even asking the question.

So on a political level, their argument is very simple.

This was a partisan witch hunt generated by the last Democratic administration.

The legal argument is actually a little more complicated, and it touches on a lot of things.

First, I would just say not everyone inside the Justice Department has the exact same view about

about this case i have talked to people who feel very strongly that it was a very strong case a chargeable case a pursuable case and it's frustrating to those people that the case was dropped i have talked to other people inside the department who have made the argument look this was a great beginning of a case we had not finished the case and it's not a terrific case without more evidence

So there aren't universal views about this even inside the department.

But it also – this case speaks to what's really a long-running disagreement about whether or not the Justice Department is overusing and stretching corruption laws.

beyond what they were intended to do.

And over a number of years, the Supreme Court has basically whittled away at how federal corruption laws can be used and has repeatedly sent a signal to the Justice Department that certainly the conservatives on the court believe that the Justice Department is, in many cases, misusing or overusing corruption statutes to go after politicians.

Well, exactly.

And one of the ways that this case gets argued about among lawyers is there's something called stream of benefits corruption, which makes the argument that you don't need a very explicit quid pro quo.

You don't need a very explicit, you give me X dollars and I will do Y for you.