In 2013, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office faced a decision: whether to join other attorneys general’s investigations into Trump University, where students paid up to $35,000 for business classes that critics claimed were fraudulent.
Despite receiving complaints of student exploitation, Bondi and then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris both declined to participate in the investigation. Both had received political donations from Donald Trump and denied that the funds influenced their office’s decision.
Since then, the two former attorneys general have followed opposite political paths. Harris attacked Trump in the 2020 and 2024 elections, portraying him as a corporate fraud and a threat to democracy. Trump won re-election earlier this month.
Bondi has spent the past decade defending Trump and attacking those investigating him. If confirmed by the Senate, Bondi will now become President-elect Trump’s attorney general.
A key question is whether Bondi will follow through on promises she made in television interviews to investigate what she called out-of-control federal prosecutors and FBI agents.
“The Justice Department, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Bondi said on Fox News last year after Trump was indicted in Georgia on charges of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “The investigators will be investigated.”
Bondi called the prosecutors who accused Trump of crimes members of “the deep state” — and spread a false conspiracy theory that DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents were part of a secret cabal trying to undermine Trump. Bondi said, without citing evidence, that since they were no longer “hiding in the shadows, they can all be investigated.”
Bondi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Current and former Justice Department officials have expressed mixed reactions to Bondi, who was picked by Trump to be attorney general, hours after Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has repeatedly denied allegations of paying prostitutes and having sex with a minor , had withdrawn from consideration.
DOJ officials said they view Bondi as a much more favorable choice than Gaetz because she had a long career as a local prosecutor and attorney general in Florida. At the same time, they see her as a Trump loyalist who they fear will not hesitate to carry out his effort to investigate his enemies.
“I expect her to do exactly what Trump wants her to do,” said a recently departed senior Justice Department official. He added that members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team are very concerned and are talking to attorneys.
On Friday, The Washington Post, citing two people close to Trump’s transition, reported that Trump plans to fire Smith and the entire team that helped Smith indict Trump on federal charges of mishandling classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The Post also reported that Trump expects the Justice Department to investigate his long-discredited claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Trump’s previous attorneys general
Trump’s last attorney general, William Barr, was dismissive of Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud and declined to launch a Justice Department investigation into it, citing a lack of evidence. After publicly stating that there was no evidence of widespread fraud, Barr resigned.
When Trump tried to appoint Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ official who backed his false 2020 fraud claims, as acting attorney general, a half-dozen senior DOJ leaders threatened to resign. Three days later, Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol to block recognition of his defeat.
Bondi, meanwhile, supported Trump’s claims of fraud. She traveled to Philadelphia and held press conferences where she promoted false claims of widespread voter fraud and insisted the election had been stolen from Trump.
“We know the ballots have been dumped,” Bondi said. “We’ve heard of people receiving ballots that were dead. That happens all over the country.’
Bondi also served as a lawyer for Trump during his first impeachment, alleging that the president was being unfairly investigated. During the
Bondi is currently a partner at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, where she leads the firm’s compliance practice, according to the firm’s website.
Some attorneys in Florida have defended Bondi, saying she followed standards as attorney general. Dave Aronberg, the district attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, told The Washington Post that Bondi will be much better for the DOJ than Gaetz.
“She is hands-on and she is also loyal to her colleagues, which means she won’t try to push someone out because they are a Democrat or a career prosecutor who is apolitical,” Aronberg told the Post. “She believes in the rule of law.”
The question now is whether, if confirmed, Bondi will make good on her public promise that ‘the accusers will be prosecuted’. And if she refuses to prosecute prosecutors for political reasons, she will be forced out by Trump like her predecessors.
A former DOJ official who worked during the first Trump administration said he did not know Bondi well, but that he did know Trump.
“I think whoever he chooses will be loyal to him first and foremost,” he said. “That’s the most important test for him. I don’t expect him to pick anyone over him who will be honorable and loyal to the Constitution.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
