Pam Bondi, Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Justice Department, has suggested that prosecutors who have filed charges against Trump "will be prosecuted, the bad ones." Speaking last year on Fox News, she said, “The investigators will be investigated," reports the Washington Post. While Bondi’s public commentary is not so incendiary as confrontational rhetoric from former DOJ nominee Matt Gaetz— which included calling for the FBI to be abolished — she has served as a reliable advocate for Trump and a critic of attempts to investigate or prosecute him. Bondi joined Trump’s first impeachment defense, went on television to allege cheating by Democrats when Trump lost his 2020 reelection bid and appeared at a Manhattan courthouse last spring to support Trump while he stood trial on charges of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to an adult-film actress ahead of the 2016 election.
Trump says Bondi will “refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime.” Bondi met Trump while in college and was friendly with two of his children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. In 2016, Bondi defended her handling of a $25,000 donation Trump made in 2013 to a her state attorney general campaign political action committee. Bondi had been weighing whether Florida should join a lawsuit by then-New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman alleging tax fraud against Trump University. Bondi had received 22 complaints against the company, though her office considered only one of them credible. She elected not to pursue a case. Dave Aronberg, the state attorney for Palm Beach County, Fla., said Bondi will be much better for the Justice Department than Gaetz would have been. Gaetz never worked as a prosecutor and would have been the first attorney general in four decades without experience as a government attorney or judge. “She is no political hack,” Aronberg said. “She is not taking the job to burn the DOJ down as Matt Gaetz pledged to do.” Trump plans to fire the team that worked with special counsel Jack Smith to pursue two federal prosecutions again him. Trump is planning to assemble investigative teams in DOJ to hunt for evidence that fraud tainted the 2020 election. In Florida, Bondi opposed efforts to legalize medical marijuana, a position that could put her at odds with Trump, who during his campaign expressed pro-cannabis policies.