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Friday, November 22, 2024
Pam Bondi has shown how willing she is to use her authority to help Trump. (Philip Bump, WaPo)
So would it be fair to say that DJT picked PAMELA JO BONDI as U.S. Attorney General only after disgraced ex-Congressman from Florida MATTHEW LOUIS GATES II, his first nominee failed because he was a whoremonger? This weird wacky willing weak woman was an accomplice in DJT's bogus election fraud claims: is this louche lobbyist and registered foreign agent for Qatar is a national disgrace. From The Washington Post:
Pam Bondi has shown how willing she is to use her authority to help Trump
What more could Donald Trump want in an attorney general pick?
5 min
Pam Bondi, seen here at a July 2021 event with Donald Trump, was tapped by the president-elect on Thursday for the role of attorney general. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
It didn’t take President-elect Donald Trump long to rebound from former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz’s decision not to seek confirmation as attorney general. Hours later, Trump proposed that the job instead go to another resident of his home state, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.
Bondi and Gaetz have several other similarities, including the sort of media savvy for which Trump has a proven fondness. (As attorney general, Bondi took time out of serving the state one week to be a co-host of Fox News’s show “The Five.”) But no similarity is likely more important to Trump than the one he highlighted when announcingeachas his pick to lead the Justice Department: their willingness to combat the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement, which is to say a willingness to exact retribution within the department for investigating Trump and his 2016 campaign. Trump showed trust in both Bondi and Gaetz to leverage the power wielded by the attorney general’s position to the ends he wants.
Where do Bondi and Gaetz differ? Bondi, far more than Gaetz, has already done it.
In the wake of Trump’s 2020 election loss, Bondi was one of a coterie of Trump allies who barnstormed the country to allege that the election results were suspect. She traveled to Pennsylvania, where she appeared at press events with longtime Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. She was no longer the attorney general of Florida at that point, but her past title was still used in news reports and at news conferences partly as a means of establishing her authority.
On Nov. 5, 2020, she appeared on “Fox & Friends,” Fox News’s flagship morning program. She was introduced with that title, which also appeared on-screen. And she began by insisting that, contrary to what a reporter for the channel had said, “we do have evidence of cheating [in the Pennsylvania vote], and I’ll talk about that in a minute.”
She did not talk about it, because there was no such evidence. Instead, she focused mainly on how campaign allies were allowed to observe vote counting only from a distance. She hinted that this might be allowing illicit ballots, ones that maybe arrived after Election Day, to enter the mix.
All the good residents who are all supporting us in Pennsylvania,” she said, “their votes don’t count by these fake ballots that are coming in late. And they are not letting us watch the process.”
Host Steve Doocy pressed her on that: She was saying there were fake votes?
Well, maybe, Bondi said. “We know ballots have been dumped. There were ballots that were found early on. We’ve heard that people were receiving ballots that were dead.”
There was no evidence then of fraudulent voting, and there remains no evidence four years later. But here was a former state attorney general claiming that something suspect was afoot. A former law enforcement officer who had, at another point, accused a state official of “intimidation” in keeping observers at the required distance.
As Trump’s position became more obviously indefensible in the weeks that followed, Bondi was no longer part of the public effort to subvert the results. Her departure from the effort was noted by the Tampa Bay Times.
While her efforts in 2020 were perhaps the most obvious unorthodox demonstration of Bondi’s willingness to aid Trump, it probably shouldn’t be considered the first one.
She took over the attorney general position in Florida in 2011. The office for years had received complaints about business ventures bearing Trump’s name, including “Trump University,” a real estate training course that was sued for fraud, resulting in a $25 million settlement. That lawsuit began in 2013 in the office of the attorney general of New York. Bondi’s office told Florida newspapers that it was reviewing the allegations in the suit.
Then, the Trump Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization, contributed$25,000 to a political organization supporting Bondi — a contribution that was illegal. In October 2013, Bondi’s office told reporters that it was not considering joining the New York lawsuit. One of the lawyers involved in that decision was appointed to a federal position after Trump won the presidency.
According to a Bondi fundraiser who spoke to CNN, the contribution request to Trump was made in August or September 2013. Bondi has denied being influenced by the contribution; an investigation into the interaction determined there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges.
That investigation was initiated by Rick Scott, then the governor of Florida. When he sought election to the U.S. Senate in 2018, his bid to replace incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) resulted in a remarkably close race. And Scott, in a preview of Trump’s efforts two years later, asserted that his Democratic opponent was trying to steal the election as votes were slowly counted in Democratic counties. Trump, eager for another Republican in the Senate, amplified Scott’s claims.
As attorney general, Bondi did as well. She sent letters chiding officials in other government agencies for not launching investigations into “clearly documented irregularities” in those counties. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, an agency on the receiving end of one of the letters, noted that there were “no allegations of fraud” to investigate. Subsequent investigations didn’t uncover any evidence of fraud.
There are other questions surrounding Bondi’s selection to serve as attorney general, including her work as a lobbyist after leaving her position. (One of her clients was the private prison company GEO Group, which saw its stock price surge after Trump won the 2024 election as investors speculated about the need for added detention space in a massive deportation effort.) But the central question for Trump appears to be whether his next attorney general will be the loyal ally that he expected his previous attorneys general to be.
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