President-elect Donald Trump has named several of his personal lawyers to take top jobs in the Justice Department, with Pam Bondi in the lead as his nominee for U.S. Attorney General. Bondi’s nomination is bad news for the rule of law, and a sign of the ways that Trump seems eager to corrupt the Justice Department.
“Pam Bondi has made clear that her undeviating allegiance to the President-elect supersedes her respect for democratic institutions,” said Janai Nelson, president of the Legal Defense Fund in a statement calling the nomination “alarming” and opposing confirmation.
Indeed, Bondi’s record suggests that she’ll do whatever Trump wants—including taking revenge on Justice Department lawyers who have taken part in investigations of Trump. Appearing as a pro-Trump pundit on Fox News, she declared, “The prosecutors will be prosecuted—the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated…the house needs to be cleaned out.”
Bondi has claimed to be committed to the rule of law and opposed to corruption, but none of that seems to apply when it comes to Donald Trump.
When Bondi was serving as Florida’s Attorney General—she got elected with backing from Sarah Palin—her office was investigating complaints that Trump University defrauded students. While that was happening, a political group supporting Bondi’s campaign took an illegal political contribution from his foundation and her office decided not to file suit.
Bondi has been an enthusiastic Trump loyalist for years, both as a campaign surrogate and lawyer, before, during, and after his first term. While speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention, she responded to shouts of “lock her up”—referring to Hillary Clinton—by saying “Lock her up, I love that!”
Bondi represented Trump during his first impeachment trial.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Bondi promoted false claims that he had won. She reportedly talked Rudy Giuliani into heading to Pennsylvania, where she joined him in making false claims about voter fraud. “We won Pennsylvania,” she declared at an airport press conference. “We do have evidence of cheating,” she told Fox News, making unsubstantiated claims about “fake” ballots. “We are still on the ground in Pennsylvania. I am here and we are not going anywhere until they declare that we won Pennsylvania.”
While Bondi played a limited public role in the effort, the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection found that she was kept in the loop on Trump’s schemes to overturn the election. “In late December 2020, Trump forwarded Bondi and other advisers and Justice Department officials an update from Doug Mastriano, a Republican state senator pushing the strategy to allow the Pennsylvania legislature to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump,” the Washington Post reported.
Bondi’s promotion of Trump’s lies was harmful—and not only because they helped fuel the rage among his supporters who attacked the Capitol in a bid to keep him in power. “Pennsylvania officials from both parties say there were consequences to her actions, arguing that Bondi spread misinformation that helped wreak long-lasting damage to the electoral system,” according to the Washington Post. “One city official received antisemitic threats immediately after Bondi accused him of trying to intimidate Republican observers of the ballot count.”
Bondi reportedly worked behind the scenes to prevent Trump from being held accountable for his actions related to the failed insurrection. When former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson was preparing to appear before the Jan 6 committee, Bondi contacted her “in an apparent effort to make sure she remained loyal to the former president” and periodically sent her texts about jobs in the MAGA movement, according to Hutchinson.
And when Trump faced criminal charges last year, she echoed his attacks on the judge, joining Republican politicians who traveled to New York in a show of support, and appearing on right-wing media, where she asserted, “this is just one big press conference, trying to smear Donald Trump, trying to hurt Donald Trump.” A jury convicted Trump of 34 felony charges in the case. Following his recent sentencing, Trump will take office as a felon convicted of crimes related to election interference.
Bondi’s own record is awful. As Florida Attorney General, she opposed legal equality for same-sex couples, tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and to weaken separation of church and state. She fired attorneys investigating companies that fraudulently took people’s homes away from them during the foreclosure crisis—after taking thousands in campaign contributions from the loan processing industry.
After finishing her term as Florida’s Attorney General, Bondi joined the America First Policy Institute, a MAGA movement think tank founded by former Trump aides and funded in part by Tim Dunn, a far-right billionaire with Christian nationalist ambitions. Dunn is notorious for funding smear campaigns against Texas Republicans who don’t fall in line with his demands. Dunn poured millions of dollars into the effort to elect Trump to a second term, and supports other right-wing causes, like the Convention of States’ efforts to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.
AFPI claims “biblical foundations” for its right-wing policy agenda, and its leaders have described their efforts as part of a “spiritual war.” AFPI supported and participated in New Apostolic Reformation dominionist Lance Wallnau’s “Courage Tour,” which combined religious revivalism with pro-Trump voter registration and turnout organizing. In 2022, Bondi co-authored a Daily Caller op-ed with Paula White, who promoted Christian nationalism from her position in the first Trump White House and who has repeatedly denounced Trump’s political opponents as demonic.
AFPI founder Brooke Rollins—who Trump has named to be Secretary of Agriculture—has bragged about the group’s “revolutionary” plans to seize control of the “administrative state.” AFPI has reportedly prepared 300 executive orders for Trump. The group’s agenda for the incoming administration is in some ways even more radical than the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. It would allow Trump to fire and replace every federal employee – creating a massive and corrupt political patronage system.
As an officer at the America First Policy Institute, Bondi tried to undermine special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump by arguing that his appointment was unconstitutional.
At AFPI Bondi also oversaw what the Brennan Center has called “a number of troubling voting rights and election lawsuits,” leading the pro-democracy organization to conclude, “Her record on voting and elections raises questions about her ability to be the attorney general the American public deserves.” In a case in which AFPI sought to empower local election officials to delay or block certification of elections, AFPI’s arguments were “meritless and radical,” according to the Brennan Center. In another case filed shortly before, even notorious pro-Trump Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk rejected AFPI’s “emergency” request to block a Biden executive order on voter registration that had been in place for several years. Kacsmaryk wrote that AFPI’s request provided “no direct evidence” to support its claims. The Brennan Center noted that the lawsuit “served to amplify baseless conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting.”
A short Right Wing Watch video commentary on the Bondi nomination appears below. People For the American Way is urging senators to reject this nomination. You can add your name at www.peoplefor.org/RejectBondi.
