WASHINGTON — Attorney General Pam Bondi declared Monday that her team will “absolutely” target people spewing “hate speech” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination — roiling First Amendment advocates on the right.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” Bondi said on an episode of the “Katie Miller Pod” that dropped Monday.
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Some conservative voices were quick to criticize Bondi’s remarks — with critics highlighting an X post from Kirk in 2024 contending that “Hate speech does not exist legally in America.”
After facing blowback, Bondi clarified that she will target “hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence,” which she said “is NOT protected by the First Amendment.”
“For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over,” Bondi wrote on X Tuesday morning.
“You cannot call for someone’s murder,” she went on. “You cannot swat a Member of Congress. You cannot dox a conservative family and think it will be brushed off as ‘free speech.’ These acts are punishable crimes, and every single threat will be met with the full force of the law.”
For years, conservatives have battled against Big Tech companies for using broad definitions of hate speech in their content moderation policies.
Typically, hate speech was seen as vile remarks against specific groups of people, including comments that were racist, sexist and homophobic.
Kirk was among the critics of censorship campaigns, though his definition of hate speech doesn’t appear to include incitement of violence.
“Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” Kirk declared on X in 2024. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
In addition to vowing to go after hate speech, Bondi also railed against people who “say horrible things” and claimed that their employers have an “obligation to get rid of people.”
She weighed in on reports about a now-fired Office Depot worker who refused to print up images of Kirk for a funeral and suggested the Justice Department might drop charges.
“Businesses cannot discriminate,” she told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Monday evening. “If you wanna go in and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that.”
“We can prosecute you for that. I have Harmeet Dhillon right now in our civil rights unit looking at that immediately, that Office Depot had done that. We’re looking it up.”
That’s a reference to the Office Depot employee who turned away a customer who wanted to print off poster of Charlie Kirk. The employee was fired and the company apologized.
Criticisms against Bondi’s comments quickly mounted on the right.
“She must think she is the Attorney General of the United Kingdom,” conservative radio host Eric Erickson bemoaned. “If Pam Bondi thinks hate speech is a thing that is both real and prosecutable, every preacher in America will be prosecuted for quoting scripture on marriage and two genders.”
“This is egregiously wrong. The First Amendment exists precisely to protect speech some people may find offensive,” National Review editor Philip Klein said, referring to her comments about hate speech.
“The attorney general would be wise to read the words of the Supreme Court, which has repeatedly held that the ‘proudest boast’ of America’s free speech tradition is ‘freedom for the thought that we hate,’” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) shot back.
On Monday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told Vice President JD Vance, who was guest-hosting Kirk’s podcast, that the administration is developing an “organized strategy to go after left-wing organizations that are promoting violence.”
“The organized doxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging that is designed to trigger [or] incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence,” Miller explained.
“It is a vast domestic terror.”
Kirk was shot and killed while speaking with students at Utah Valley University last Wednesday. Following his tragic assassination, authorities apprehended Tyler Robinson, 22, as the lead suspect behind his murder.
Robinson is set to face charges later in the day on Tuesday. President Trump has called for him to face capital punishment.
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