Longtime President-elect Donald Trump loyalist Pam Bondi is his new nominee for attorney general after former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration.
Trump made the announcement in a Thursday social media post.
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – Not anymore,” Trump wrote. “Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again. I have known Pam for many years – She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!”
Unlike Gaetz, who faced allegations of sex trafficking, Bondi, 59, is a far less controversial nomination. While Gaetz had no experience prosecuting cases, Bondi served 18 years as a prosecutor in Hillsborough County, Florida, before being elected as Florida’s first female attorney general in 2010.
During her tenure, Bondi took on a lawsuit attempting to weaken the Affordable Care Act, but her initiative failed. She served as Florida’s attorney general for eight years.
Notably, Bondi failed to file a lawsuit against Trump in 2013 after her office received nearly two dozen complaints involving his Trump University.
Bondi then received a $25,000 donation to her PAC from a nonprofit organization funded by Trump. Three years later, the president-elect was ordered to pay a $2,500 fine for violating federal tax laws when making the contribution.
Upon leaving office in 2018, Bondi went on to serve as chairwoman of America First Policy, a conservative, Trump-aligned think tank.
Bondi also joined Trump’s defense team when he was impeached the first time. She accused President Joe Biden, a private citizen at the time, of being involved in corrupt foreign business dealings with his son, Hunter Biden. She asserted that the president threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine unless the government removed a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company which his son was associated with. This became a key aspect of Trump’s impeachment trial.
Before being hired by Trump’s defense team in 2020, Bondi was a registered lobbyist for the Qatari government. She worked for Ballard Partners, which is run by Brian Ballard, who has close fundraising ties to Trump.
One of Ballard Partners’s clients, Halkbank, was indicted on charges of invading Iraq sanctions just a month before Bondi joined the impeachment proceedings.
These accusations against Joe Biden never led to criminal charges, but they did prop up Bondi’s position in Trumpworld, and she spoke during the 2020 Republican National Convention.
In addition to advocating the interests of foreign governments, Bondi lobbied for the interests of Amazon, General Motors, and Uber.
When Trump made accusations of election fraud, Bondi amplified them. She appeared on a Fox News segment following the election in which she asserted that fake ballots were being counted.
She also attended Trump’s New York hush money trial in which he was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
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Trump has been highly critical of the Justice Department’s investigations into him, accusing it of engaging in lawfare.
So far, Bondi’s nomination has not spelled the chaos of Gaetz’s, who was being investigated by the House for ethics violations. However, some have questioned her experience lobbying and representing corporate interests.