Does Attorney General Pam Bondi misunderstand the law, or does she want Donald Trump’s supporters to misunderstand the law? Either would be bad, but the question arises in connection with her recent comments about so-called hate speech.

Speaking on a podcast hosted by Katie Miller (wife of Trump aide Stephen Miller), Bondi said, “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech.”

That sounds like the sort of thing that maybe could be true, especially coming from a nominally authoritative figure like the attorney general of the United States.

But she’s incorrect. The law doesn’t make such a distinction. The point has been reinforced by none other than Justice Samuel Alito, certainly no wilting liberal. “Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate,’” he wrote in a 2017 opinion.

Nonetheless, Bondi told Miller that the administration “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

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The attorney general’s comments came in the context of last week’s fatal shooting of Trump ally Charlie Kirk. Though Kirk has been celebrated over the last week by conservatives and some liberals as a free speech proponent, the administration and its supporters and enablers have supported, sought or carried out the firings of Americans who have made hateful or even simply critical comments about Kirk.

But putting aside the clear political hypocrisy, the legal fact remains that there’s no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. On the one hand, that’s comforting insofar as it should defeat any prosecutions attempted by the administration against people for protected speech. Yet, even if one is ultimately successful in defeating any frivolous legal moves, that comfort only extends so far under an administration whose words and actions show that it has gone after and will continue to go after people and groups it sees as its opponents. Regardless of the outcome, no one should want to be targeted in the first place.

Beyond this one important speech issue, Bondi’s error raises a broader question: If the attorney general is incorrect about this basic legal premise, what other errors might she be making when it comes to the range of crucial matters that face the Justice Department every day?

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