The incoming Trump administration didn’t waste any time on Thursday after Matt Gaetz said that he was dropping his bid to become attorney general. Soon afterwards it announced that Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, would seek the top position at the Justice Department instead.
Bondi, 59, who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019 and represented the president-elect at his first impeachment trial in the Senate, is both an experienced public official and a long-time Trump ally.
Gaetz reacted to the choice on X by calling her “a stellar selection” as well as “a proven litigator, an inspiring leader and a champion for all Americans”.
South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham was even more effusive, posting: “Well done, Mr President. Picking Pam Bondi for Attorney General is a grand slam, touchdown, hole in one, ace, hat trick, slam dunk, Olympic gold medal pick. She will be confirmed quickly because she deserves to be confirmed quickly.”
Here’s what you need to know about her.
Ethical questions around campaign cash in Florida
Donald Trump and Bondi have ties that date back over a decade, to when Bondi was serving as Florida’s first female attorney general.
In 2013, as Bondi’s office was receiving complaints from people alleging they had been scammed by the future president’s Trump University seminars, her political committee received a $25,000 donation from the Donald J Trump Foundation.
While New York pursued lawsuits related to the seminars, the Sunshine State did not. Both Trump and Bondi have denied the donation was improper or related to the charging decision. That wasn’t the only campaign-related scandal in her time in Florida.
That same year, she persuaded then-governor Rick Scott to reschedule the execution of convicted murderer Marshall Lee Fore to accommodate a fundraiser.
“I should not have requested the execution be moved. It had been [delayed] twice,” she said at the time, The Tampa Tribune reported. “I’m sorry. And it will not happen again.”
A record of high-profile cases
Unlike some of the Trump administration’s other nominees, who lack direct government experience related to their cabinet positions, Bondi has a substantial record in public office and has shown a willingness to take on high-profile cases.
She helped appoint the special prosecutor who investigated the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin – an unarmed Black teenager – by a neighborhood watch volunteer.
She also initiated a lawsuit in 2018 against the makers of opioid medications, litigation that eventually culminated in a $3bn settlement with the state of Florida after leaving office.
Bondi’s office also sued BP after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and helped net Florida a $2bn payout.
A diehard Trump defender and political ally
Since leaving office, Bondi has been a resolute ally of Trump. She served on Trump’s opioids commission and helped coordinate his response to moments when his administration was in peril.
In 2019, Trump hired her to help it fend off its first impeachment investigation, over allegations of a quid pro quo agreement to pressure Ukrainian officials to go after the Biden family.
During the 6 January investigation, meanwhile, Bondi appeared on Fox News and denounced the process as a “show trial,” while reportedly being one of a number of Trumpworld figures to offer jobs to one of the key witnesses, Cassidy Hutchinson.
That support has included latching onto some of Trump’s most inflammatory claims. At the 2020 Republican National Convention (RNC), Bondi joined the chorus of Republican officials accusing Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden of corruption.
“Our party’s theme tonight is America, the land of opportunity,” Bondi said at the RNC.
“But for Joe Biden, it’s been the land of opportunism, not opportunity. As a career prosecutor and former attorney general of Florida, I fought corruption and I know what it looks like, whether it’s done by people wearing pinstripe suits or orange jumpsuits.”
In November of 2020, Bondi was outside the Philadelphia Convention Center with Trump campaign officials as they alleged voter fraud, claiming the Republicans had won Pennsylvania even before the state had declared its election results.
The alliance continued after Trump’s election defeat, with Bondi heading Trump-related political action committees, and serving as chair of litigation at the America First Policy Institute, a Maga-affiliated legal advocacy group that has denounced the prosecutions against Trump as a “weaponization” of the justice system and sought to limit future legal scrutiny of present and former presidents.
The group has argued that the pro-Trump crowd at the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol was unfairly prosecuted as the victim of a “two-tiered” justice system.
If Bondi is confirmed as attorney general, she would be responsible for the Justice Department’s sprawling 6 January case, the largest prosecution in US history, as well as the department’s response to civil rights cases and allegations of voter fraud.
She would be the third woman to serve as the attorney general and the first under a Republican administration.
A canine custody battle
Perhaps the most bizarre episode from Bondi’s history began in 2005 when she rescued a St Bernard puppy separated from its family by Hurricane Katrina, adopting it from Florida’s Pinellas County Humane Society and changing its name from Master Tank to Noah.
When the dog’s true owners, Louisiana couple Steve and Dorreen Couture, tracked it down to the lawyer’s custody, Bondi refused to return it.
She accused them of neglecting the animal, saying it was “a walking skeleton” when she took it under her wing.
The family denied the accusation and sued Bondi, sparking a 16-month legal battle, which ended with the two sides settling before it reached trial.
Bondi returned Master Tank to the Couture family with a supply of food and medication. Plans for her to receive photos and updates on the puppy’s wellbeing soon fell apart and Bondi eventually bought herself another dog.
