Dive Brief:
- President-elect Donald Trump pivoted to a second Florida loyalist, Pam Bondi, as his attorney general nominee only hours after ex-Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration amid increasing Senate resistance related to his alleged sexual misconduct and cash payments to young women.
- Bondi served as Florida’s attorney general for eight years, until 2019, later litigating some of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Bondi now works as a litigation chair for the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank to promote his policy views, and as a lobbyist for Ballard Partners in Washington.
- Bondi — whose brother Brad Bondi has been named as a potential Trump choice for the Securities and Exchange Commission — is expected to help promote Trump’s strict immigration limits, deportations of undocumented immigrants and a firm crackdown on federal ESG and DEI efforts. The DOJ is also likely to help defend lawsuits brought by states targeting parts of Trump’s agenda.
Dive Insight:
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans — Not anymore,” Trump wrote Thursday on his Truth Social media account. “Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again.”
Bondi would become the third woman to serve as Attorney General if she is confirmed.
Bondi was on Trump’s legal team in January 2020 for his first Senate impeachment trial. She also supported Trump’s false voter fraud claims in late 2020, following his election loss to Joe Biden, at multiple press conferences and in television interviews.
Bondi’s history with Trump dates back to at least 2013 when her office and other states were investigating consumer complaints about Trump University, which offered virtual and in-person training seminars, according to media reports.
In September 2013, one of Trump’s foundations donated $25,000 to a Bondi political fundraising committee, And Justice for All, three days after a spokeswoman for the attorney general said the office was reviewing allegations in a lawsuit New York had filed against Trump University, the Tampa Bay Times reported at the time.
In April 2017, a Florida prosecutor concluded there was insufficient evidence to pursue a bribery complaint against Trump and Bondi related to the donation, the Associated Press reported. Bondi later sought to return the funds to Trump, according to the AP.
Before her 2010 election as Florida’s attorney general, Bondi worked as a state prosecutor in Tampa, near her hometown. As AG, Bondi sought to overturn the Affordable Care Act through a multistate litigation effort, which led to the Supreme Court upholding the law in 2018 but ruling that the law’s individual mandate, fining those without insurance, was unconstitutional.
Bondi defended the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, which voters ratified in 2008, banning same-sex marriages when the state was sued in 2014 for not recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states.
Bondi also battled opioids during her tenure as Florida AG, pushing legislators to address the state’s reputation as a “pill mill” with tougher laws regulating doctors prescribing narcotics, including criminal penalties and reporting requirements for pharmacists.
Bondi fought unsuccessfully to retain the state’s practice of allowing non-unanimous juries to impose a death sentence. In 2017, the Supreme Court declined to hear Bondi’s petition to review a Florida Supreme Court decision requiring unanimous jury votes for a capital penalty.
Her brother, Brad Bondi, global co-chair of the investigations and white-collar defense practice at Paul Hastings, has been named as a potential Trump selection for the SEC, the cryptocurrency news site Unchained reported Nov. 14, citing three sources connected to Bondi or Trump’s transition team.
Brad Bondi, a former SEC executive staff counsel, has also defended the electric automaker Tesla when securities regulators sued the company in 2018 related to founder Elon Musk’s social media posts about taking Tesla private.
Brad Bondi did not return a message from Legal Dive Friday seeking comment.
