WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, will face questions on Capitol Hill Wednesday about her loyalty to the Republican president-elect, who has vowed to use the agency to retaliate against his alleged political enemies.
The former Florida attorney general and corporate lobbyist would be one of the most scrutinized members of Trump’s Cabinet if she were confirmed to lead the department that prosecuted the former and future president in two separate criminal cases that were never resolved have come to trial.
Here’s what you need to know about Bondi ahead of her confirmation hearing:
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She is a close ally of Trump and a longtime defender
Bondi has been a fixture in Trump’s inner circle for years and a regular defender of the newly elected president on news programs amid his legal troubles. She will likely face many questions about her public statements criticizing the criminal cases against Trump, given his threats to seek retaliation against those he believes have wronged him.
“The Justice Department and prosecutors will be prosecuted – the bad,” Bondi said on Fox News in 2023. “The investigators will be investigated.”
Bondi said members of the so-called deep state were “hiding in the shadows” during Trump’s first term, “but now they are in the spotlight and they can all be investigated.”
Bondi traveled to New York last May to support Trump in court as he stood trial in his hush-money criminal case. Trump was sentenced to no punishment in that case last week after his jury conviction on 34 felony charges.
Following Trump’s guilty verdict in that case, Bondi said during another Fox News appearance — alongside Trump’s pick for FBI director Kash Patel — that “there has been a tremendous amount of loss of confidence in the justice system tonight.” She added: “The American people see through it.”
On a radio show last August, she compared special counsel Jack Smith to “a rabid dog” after he filed a new election interference charge against Trump in 2020 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. Smith left that case — and the separate case involving classified documents — after Trump’s victory in November, citing the Justice Department’s policy not to prosecute sitting presidents.
Florida’s first female attorney general
Bondi was first elected Florida’s attorney general in 2010, defeating Democratic state Sen. Dan Gelber after winning the support of Alaska’s former Republican governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
As attorney general of Florida, Bondi led a challenge brought by more than two dozen states against President Barack Obama’s health care reform. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld the health care law. Bondi also fought to uphold Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage, arguing that marriage should be defined by each state.
One of her top priorities as attorney general has been to pursue so-called pill mills, or clinics that dispense large quantities of prescription painkillers and have fueled the nation’s opioid crisis.
Bondi faced an ethics investigation after personally soliciting a political contribution from Trump in 2013 as her office weighed whether to join New York in a lawsuit over fraud allegations involving Trump University.
Trump gave a $25,000 check to a political committee supporting Bondi from his family’s charitable foundation, violating the law’s ban on charities supporting partisan political activity. After the check arrived, Bondi’s office decided to sue Trump’s company for fraud, saying there were insufficient grounds to proceed.
Both Trump and Bondi denied wrongdoing, the state ethics commission dismissed the complaints and a prosecutor appointed by then-Republican Gov. Rick Scott determined there was insufficient evidence to support the bribery allegations related to the donation.
Before becoming Florida’s attorney general, Bondi spent 18 years at the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office, where she prosecuted cases “ranging from domestic violence to murder,” according to her biography at Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm she joined in 2019 . At issue was the 2006 prosecution of baseball star Dwight Gooden, who was sent to prison for violating his probation by using cocaine.
She has lobbied for companies like Amazon for years
Democrats are likely to pressure Bondi because of her years as a lobbyist and the potential conflicts of interest her work poses for companies and other entities that could come under scrutiny by the Justice Department.
Records show Bondi was registered to represent 30 clients between 2019 and 2024, including companies like Uber and Amazon during her time at Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm led by Brian Ballard, who has ties to Trump, according to advocacy group Public Citizen. .
She led Ballard Partners’ compliance practice, which focuses on helping Fortune 500 companies “implement best practices that proactively address public policy challenges such as human trafficking, opioid abuse and personal information privacy,” according to her Ballard Partners biography.
She registered as a foreign agent for the Qatari government for work related to the fight against human trafficking in the run-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. She also represented the KGL Investment Company KSCC, a Kuwaiti company also known as KGLI. The company paid Ballard $300,000 in 2019 to lobby the White House, National Security Council, State Department and Congress on immigration policy, human rights and economic sanctions.
In addition to her lobbying work, she also served as chair of the Center for Litigation and co-chair of the Center for Law and Justice at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded by former Trump administration aides to lay the groundwork for its potential. second term. Her work in that role included filing a brief with the Supreme Court in support of a public high school football coach who was fired for praying on the field after games.
She was part of Trump’s first defense team in the impeachment trial
Bondi stopped lobbying in 2020 to defend Trump during his first impeachment trial against charges that Trump abused the power of his office when he pressured Ukraine’s president during a phone call to expel then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. to investigate. of the 2020 elections.
Trump, who denied any wrongdoing, was impeached in the US House of Representatives and acquitted in the US Senate.
Bondi was brought in to strengthen White House messaging and communications. Trump and his allies tried to delegitimize the impeachment from the start, aiming to dismiss the whole thing as a farce.
Bondi supported Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the 2020 election results
Bondi supported Trump’s efforts to challenge his 2020 loss to Biden as she traveled to Pennsylvania in the days after the election, where she claimed the campaign showed signs of “cheating.”
Bondi appeared at a press conference in Philadelphia the day after the 2020 election, along with then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor of New York City has since lost his law license in New York and Washington DC after addressing false claims Trump made about his election loss.
At the news conference, Giuliani suggested that counterfeit ballots could be pouring in from “Mars” or nearby Camden, New Jersey — or, he said, “Joe Biden could have voted 50 times, or 5,000 times, for all we know.” Bondi said poll workers in Philadelphia were keeping Republican poll watchers too far behind and preventing them from doing their work.
“We won Pennsylvania and we want every vote to be counted fairly,” Bondi said.
The next day, Bondi stated during an appearance on Fox & Friends that there was “evidence of cheating.”
“We’re not going anywhere until they declare that we won Pennsylvania,” Bondi said, claiming that “fake ballots came in late.” But when the anchor pressed her on those ‘fake ballots’ again, she responded: – that’s the problem… We don’t know.”
Bondi further claimed that the ballots were “dumped” and that “people were receiving dead ballots.”
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud that changed the outcome of the 2020 election.
