President-elect Trump again turned to a loyalist in tapping former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead the Department of Justice.
Trump named his choice just hours after former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Thursday withdrew from consideration, his nomination plagued by allegations that he had sexual relations with a minor, which he denies.
The announcement about Bondi garnered immediate enthusiasm from numerous key Senate Republicans, a sign she could face an easier path to confirmation.
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans - Not anymore,” Trump wrote in announcing his pick on his social media site.
Here’s what to know about Trump’s new pick to lead the DOJ:
Bondi was a senior adviser on Trump’s first impeachment defense team, a role for which she took a leave from the lobbying firm Ballard Partners. She then rejoined the firm, which was founded by Florida lobbyist Brian Ballard, the former 2016 chair of Trump Victory fundraising committee.
She is still a partner at Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm at which Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles worked. During her time there Bondi also lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government.
During her work on Trump’s first impeachment, Bondi raised unsubstantiated claims that would later become central to the Republican case for impeaching President Biden, floating without evidence that he had engaged in corrupt business practices with his son Hunter Biden.
Trump and Bondi’s ties go back to even before he entered politics, when in 2013 he gave a $25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation to a political committee supporting Bondi. Bondi was weighing joining a suit against Trump University at the time.
Bondi has endorsed Trump since 2016, doing so even as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), her home-state senator, was running for president. During the first Trump administration, Bondi served on a presidential commission focused on drug addiction and the opioid crisis.
Shortly before leaving office, Trump named Bondi as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.
Bondi also currently works for the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization made up of many former Trump officials advocating for policies aligned with the now-incoming president.
Bondi was one of numerous attorneys who stepped into the fray as Trump was challenging the outcome of the 2020 election.
Though they filed 62 lawsuits, all were unsuccessful, and in some cases spurred condemnation by judges for including false claims.
Bondi was among those who backed Trump’s claims there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, falsely claiming Trump had won Pennsylvania and insisting they had “evidence of cheating.”
At one point she raised the possibility of “fake ballots” being counted in the state but then declined to get into specifics.
She has since been a critic of special counsel Jack Smith, who brought charges against Trump relating to his efforts to thwart the transfer of power after he lost, and mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.
In one recent radio appearance, she called Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump “horrible” people she said were trying to make names for themselves by “going after Donald Trump and weaponizing our legal system.”
And in a 2023 appearance on Fox News, she echoed Trump’s claims about a “deep state” while likewise calling for an investigation of prosecutors.
“The Department of Justice – the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated because the ‘deep state’ last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows, but now they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated,” she said.
Bondi spent roughly 30 years as a prosecutor, first working in Florida’s Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, where she was born.
Perhaps most prominently, Bondi in that role prosecuted Mets star Dwight Gooden, who in 2006 was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for violating his probation for using cocaine.
Bondi ultimately left the office to run for Florida attorney general in 2010. After she won a competitive Republican primary bolstered by her television appearances, Bondi emerged victorious in the general election and became Florida’s first female state attorney general.
As the state’s top legal officer from 2011 to 2019, she embraced fights seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act, including at the Supreme Court, and helped lead efforts seeking to combat the opioid crisis.
Bondi also defended Florida’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, with her office in court arguing that recognizing such marriages from other states would cause “significant public harm.” She shifted her tone after the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, leading to a famously heated interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“That was voted into our state constitution by the voters of Florida. That's what I was defending. It had nothing to do — I've never said I don't like gay people,” Bondi said in the 2016 interview.
While Bondi is expected to garner a more positive reception in the Senate, she may be trailed by some past controversies during her confirmation process.
Bondi was accused of improperly accepting a $25,000 donation from Trump in 2013 when she was weighing multiple fraud accusations against Trump University. She ultimately decided not to join a suit against the school brought by the New York attorney general.
Both of them denied any connection between the donation and the office’s decision, but the donation itself was illegal because it came from a tax-exempt charity organization and Trump paid a $2,500 fine.
The fine was one of numerous improper actions cited in the decision from a New York state court shutting down the foundation in 2018.
In 2013, she publicly apologized for asking that the execution of a man convicted of murder be delayed because it conflicted with a campaign fundraiser. She said she was wrong and sorry for requesting that then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) push back the execution by three weeks.
Bondi also adopted a dog in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, sparking a battle with the family who originally owned the St. Bernard. Bondi initially resisted giving the dog back to the family, prompting a lawsuit from the family. Bondi later settled the suit and returned the pet.
