Former Florida Attorney General will be nominated by President-elect Trump as U.S. Attorney General after former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) withdrew, NBC News reports. "For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans — Not anymore," Trump said on Truth Social. "Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again."
Trump praised her work against “the trafficking of deadly drugs.” Bondi served on a Trump commission focusing on ending the opioid crisis and combatting drug addiction. Bondi is a partner at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, where she chairs the company's Corporate Regulatory Compliance practice.
Bondi has long ties to Trump. During the 2016 Republican National Convention, she joined in “lock her up” chants aimed at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was on Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Bondi was involved in efforts to overturn the results, falsely claiming that Trump had “won Pennsylvania.” This year, Bondi led the legal arm of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, which planned policies for a potential second Trump presidency.
She worked to file voting lawsuits in battleground states relating to the presidential election. Bondi is from Temple Terrace, Fla., where her father was mayor. She has a criminal justice degree from the University of Florida and a law degree from Stetson Law School.
Trump was told by advisers that she was a good alternative to Gaetz because she has allies across the Republican party as well as inside Trump’s world, The Guardian reports.
Bondi spent more than 18 years as a prosecutor in the Hillsborough county state attorney’s office in Tampa. She was a political unknown when she was elected as Florida’s first female attorney general in 2010 and had received an endorsement from former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
She served as Florida’s top prosecutor from 2011 to 2019, and later as a lobbyist for US. and international clients.
Bondi’s tenure as attorney general coincided with two of the most high-profile and deadly shootings the nation has seen. In 2016, after 47 people were shot and killed and more than 50 were injured in an extremist attack on an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Bondi was called out by CNN’s Anderson Cooper over her support for a ban on same-sex marriage in the state.
Two years later, 17 students and staff were shot and killed by a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school. Bondi called for the death penalty for the shooter and supported then governor Rick Scott in the passage of a law raising the minimum age for someone to buy a gun from 18 to 21.
Bondi’s ties to Trump go back years. While serving as Florida’s attorney general, she backed Trump in 2016 over a candidate from her home state, Marco Rubio.
In 2016, the Associated Press reported that Bondi had personally asked Trump for a donation to her campaign three years earlier. The funds came through a Trump family foundation, which is in violation of policies around charities engaging in politics.
The $25,000 donation came as Bondi’s office was considering joining New York in an investigation of Trump’s universities, over allegations of fraud and false promises about what training and job prospects for students would look like. Once the check arrived, Bondi declined to participate in the investigation/
Bondi tried to send the check back, the Florida Times-Union reported, but it was rejected and returned by Trump.
Bondi has harshly criticized the criminal cases against Trump as well as Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Trump in two federal cases. She described Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump as “horrible” people “weaponizing our legal system”.
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