Fifty-nine years old, a lawyer and lobbyist and above all, loyal to Donald Trump. Pam Bondi has been nominated by the president-elect to serve as Attorney General, replacing Matt Gaetz, who retired claiming that the ongoing investigation in the House Ethics Committee concerning him is a “distraction.”
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “For too long, the Justice Department has been used as a weapon against me and other Republicans. Not anymore. Pam will refocus the Justice Department on its goal of fighting crime and making America safe again. I have known Pam for many years-she is smart and tenacious and an AMERICA FIRST style fighter who will do a great job as Attorney General!”
Bondi’s name began circulating soon after the announcement of Gaetz’s retirement as Florida congressman and nomination as AG. According to CNN sources, Gaetz’s confirmation was a virtual impossibility. The allegations against him and the documents filed with the House Ethics Committee—not yet made public, although the request has already been made by both parties—had instilled doubt among Republican senators. Once the decision was made, Trump summoned Bondi to Mar-a-Lago before officially offering her the position.
Bondi served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019, first at the municipal level, in Tampa, and then at the state level. Currently, she is president of the think tank Center for Litigation at the America First Policy Institute, which is working with Trump’s transition team on the administration agenda.
She is known as a great mediator, however, her most notable quality is her absolute loyalty to Trump. It is a relationship that has been ongoing since 2016, when the tycoon’s name first appeared in the Republican primaries. In his rivalry with Marco Rubio, she sided with the current president-elect and never wavered in her support from then on. In fact, she attended every event in Florida; she appeared repeatedly on Fox News, this summer she spoke at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, she became close to Trump’s entourage, linking up with Susie Wiles, now nominated as chief of staff, and attorney Boris Epshteyn. In 2019, she served on Trump’s defense panel in his first impeachment trial. Most recently, together with a team of lawyers, she filed an amicus brief with a federal appeals court in the case of top secret documents withheld by the tycoon after he left the White House.
Unlike Gaetz, Bondi seems to have few skeletons in the closet. The reservations existing against her nomination stem mainly from an incident in 2013, when she received a $25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. At the time, her attorney general’s office was considering whether to join a lawsuit against Trump University for alleged fraud, and after receiving that money, Bondi decided not to participate. This raised concerns in Democratic circles especially, about a potential conflict of interest and her impartiality.
However, at this point the Senate seems to be favorable to the nomination. Allies of the president-elect breathed a sigh of relief, commenting to CNN that the confirmation process for Bondi would be “much easier than Gaetz.”
