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Hi, y’all,
After Matt Gaetz’s spectacular implosion as Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, the president-elect has named another Floridian many see as a less controversial choice: Pam Bondi. Once the attorney general for Florida, she’s made a name for herself as a Trump loyalist. Her support for his claims of voter fraud and election interference, most notably for this audience, have been consistent and foreshadow what the Justice Department’s approach to elections could be if she’s confirmed.
You might, for example, remember her for her efforts to advance Trump’s allegations of fraud after the 2020 election. She was present at Rudy Giuliani’s infamous Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference, and insisted in interviews that Trump would have won Pennsylvania but for all the “cheating” in Philadelphia. To that end, she and others went to the state to falsely declare victory while filing pointless lawsuits.
Bondi has been a Trump devotee since before it was cool. She endorsed him in the 2016 primary over fellow Floridian Marco Rubio, and then joined the Trump administration’s transition team. When Trump fired his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in 2018, her name was floated for the position before Trump ultimately selected William Barr.
In 2020, she was part of the team who defended Trump when he was first impeached over charges of abuse of power related to Ukraine. She made the rounds on television, defending his actions.
Since 2021, Bondi has been the chair of America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) Center for Litigation and co-chair of its Center for Law and Justice. While in that role, the center advocated for the overturn of a Biden executive order that expanded voter registration access and waged multiple voting-related battles in state courts across the country.
This history paints a vivid picture of how Bondi would run the Department of Justice, if she is approved by the Senate: exactly how Trump wants her to.
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – Not anymore,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial when he announced her appointment. “Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again.”
She and Trump appear to share an interest in seeking vengeance against prosecutors who attempted to criminally pursue the former and future president.
“The Department of Justice, 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.”
That aligns with Trump’s promise in September to aggressively go after “corrupt election officials” and others if Trump believed they cheated in the 2024 election.
Bondi has not spoken publicly about some other possible Trump DOJ priorities floated by conservatives, such as culling the attorneys in the voting rights division or refocusing that division’s priorities towards investigating voter fraud rather than preventing voter suppression. She’s also said very little about the attacks on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
So far, it appears Republican lawmakers see Bondi as confirmable and there has been no major pushback to her nomination. But, Trump’s nomination processes have historically been chaotic and full of surprises — and this year is no exception. So who knows what will happen in the next few months. We’ll keep you posted.
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.
