Pam Bondi Is Trump’s New Choice as Attorney General. Here’s What to Know About Her.

 

Pam Bondi Is Trump’s New Choice as Attorney General. Here’s What to Know About Her.

 

Florida’s first female state attorney general, she became a member of Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team and backed his false claims of election fraud in 2020.

 

Glenn Thrush

By Glenn Thrush

Nov. 21, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/us/politics/pam-bondi-trump-attorney-general.html

 

President-elect Donald J. Trump quickly swept aside Thursday’s bad headlines about Matt Gaetz by speedily substituting Pam Bondi, a fellow Florida Republican with a starkly different profile — but a similar reputation for fealty — to be his attorney general.

 

Ms. Bondi, 59, is a lobbyist and Trump loyalist who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019. She has charted a more conventional and less clamorous course than Mr. Gaetz, with little of the ugly personal or political baggage that led some Republicans to oppose Mr. Gaetz’s nomination.

 

She was a local prosecutor.

Ms. Bondi, the daughter of the mayor of a small Tampa-area municipality, began working as an assistant state attorney in Hillsborough County in the 1990s. During 18 years as a prosecutor, she tried cases “ranging from domestic violence to capital murder,” according to the bio page at her lobbying firm.

 

She supervised a handful of high-profile cases, most notably one involving the former New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden, who served a one-year prison sentence for violating probation in a drug case in 2006.

 

She was elected Florida’s first female attorney general in 2010.

Ms. Bondi — a Democrat until 2000 — emerged from a crowded Republican primary to win the attorney general’s race after garnering the support of Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and failed 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, and by touting her tough stance on crime during appearances on Fox News.

 

During her eight-year tenure, she tried unsuccessfully to overturn and weaken the Affordable Care Act, opposed expanding legal protections for the L.G.B.T.Q. community and cultivated a national reputation by supporting anti-human-trafficking efforts.

 

She also drew fire for her fund-raising practices — and for persuading the governor at the time, Rick Scott, to postpone an execution in 2013 because it conflicted with a fund-raiser for her re-election campaign. She later apologized.

 

She declined to take legal action against Trump University.

In 2013, Ms. Bondi’s office received nearly two dozen complaints about Mr. Trump’s short-lived for-profit university, and her aides said she was considering joining a multistate lawsuit brought on behalf of students who claimed they had been cheated.

 

Four days later, Ms. Bondi’s political action committee received a $25,000 contribution from a nonprofit funded by Mr. Trump. She never joined the lawsuit.

 

Both Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi have denied a quid pro quo. But Mr. Trump had to pay a $2,500 fine in 2016 for violating federal tax laws in making the contribution.

 

She was a member of Trump’s impeachment defense team.

After leaving office in 2019, Ms. Bondi was hired by Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with close ties to Mr. Trump, and registered as a lobbyist for Qatar. She has also represented Amazon, Uber and General Motors, according to records.

 

A year later, she joined the team defending Mr. Trump during his first impeachment, where she accused former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a private citizen, of engaging in corrupt business practices with his son Hunter. Those charges have never been substantiated, but her willingness to promote them cemented her bond with Mr. Trump and earned her a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention later that year.

 

She supported Trump’s false election claims.

After Mr. Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Ms. Bondi supported Mr. Trump’s fabricated claims of election fraud.

 

In November 2020, Ms. Bondi deflected when a Fox News host asked her to back up her assertion that “fake ballots” for Mr. Biden were pouring into tabulation centers.

 

“Pam, did you just say fake ballots?” the host asked.

 

“There could be. That’s the problem,” replied Ms. Bondi, who later accepted a post with America First Policy, a Trump-aligned group.

 

“Just tell us what you know,” he added.

 

Ms. Bondi, who would be responsible for investigating allegations of irregularities in federal elections as attorney general, did not provide any evidence.

 

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons. More about Glenn Thrush