A ‘Business-Friendly’ Lawyer’s Rise From Lobbyist to Attorney General Pick
During her time as Florida Attorney General and as a louche lobbyist, PAMELA JO BONDI showed her true loyalties are to money and power. From The New York Times:
Pam Bondi, whom President-elect Donald J. Trump intends to nominate as attorney general, received trips and donations funded by those seeking favors from her Florida office.
Reporting from Washington
Halfway through the first Trump administration, Carnival Corporation, the world’s biggest cruise line, had a problem in Cuba that it wanted the president to fix.
So Carnival, a Miami-based company, hired a new lobbyist: Pam Bondi, who developed a close relationship with Donald J. Trump during her two terms as Florida’s attorney general, the state’s top law enforcement official.
Carnival feared it could be sued for damages of up to $600 million for parking its cruise ships at Havana docks that had been seized decades earlier by Cuban communists. The company wanted Mr. Trump’s aid in fending off the lawsuits.
With Ms. Bondi’s help, Carnival’s chairman, Micky Arison, got a meeting with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office to push its case.
In the end the president did not side with the company. But Ms. Bondi’s involvement demonstrated that she could help grease relations with the Trump administration for her new clients.
It was also a continuation of her open-door approach to companies, which started when she held office in Florida.
Now, critics question if Ms. Bondi will bring that same transactional philosophy to the Justice Department. She was picked by Mr. Trump to be his nominee for attorney general after Matt Gaetz, a former congressman from Florida who was Mr. Trump’s first choice for the job, withdrew his name in the face of formidable opposition, even within his own Republican Party.
Ms. Bondi would not be the first U.S. attorney general who previously served as a lobbyist. A review of lobbying records from the last 25 years showed that Eric H. Holder Jr., who served as attorney general during the Obama administration, had worked as a registered lobbyist, and that William P. Barr, one of Mr. Trump’s attorneys general, had been a corporate leader of a government advocacy group.
But while she was Florida’s attorney general, Ms. Bondi became known for what one lobbying firm called her “business-friendly” attitude. She and her staff agreed to meet with a steady stream of lawyers whose clients — including Bridgepoint Education, a for-profit college chain, and Herbalife, a nutritional shake company — had been targeted by other states for investigations, a New York Times review of her work found.
Then, in her time as a lobbyist, which began in early 2019, Ms. Bondi represented a long roster of corporate clients, including Uber and Amazon. Many of these companies have business with the federal government — and could be subject to scrutiny by a Justice Department run by her, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest.
The client list in recent years has also included foreign entities that have tried to leverage Ms. Bondi’s influence and connections, such as a firm once run by a Russian businesswoman convicted in Kuwait of embezzling tens of millions of dollars worth of government funds.
Along the way, she also became a prominent ally of Mr. Trump’s, serving as one of his defense lawyers in his first impeachment trial and pushing efforts in Pennsylvania to overturn the results of the 2020 election. She now appears poised for confirmation in the Republican-led Senate.
“The attorney general must first serve the American people and justice,” said James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general, who also spent nearly two decades as the head of a Columbia University program focusing on the practice of law by state attorneys general, when asked about Ms. Bondi. “She can never serve the personal interests of the president or others seeking favors from him.”
Senator Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, called Ms. Bondi “a fierce, determined woman who will be a champion for the American people.”
Mr. Trump’s office did not respond to a number of detailed questions sent by The Times about Ms. Bondi’s engagements with lobbyists as Florida’s attorney general and her work as a lobbyist since. Ms. Bondi referred questions to a spokesman for the Trump-Vance transition team.
“All nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective agencies,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the Trump transition, in a statement. “As attorney general, Pam Bondi will be solely focused on returning the Department of Justice to its true mission of fighting crime, prosecuting criminals and keeping Americans safe.”
An Approachable A.G.
Appeals by corporate lobbyists to Ms. Bondi started from almost the moment she was sworn into office in January 2011 as Florida’s first female attorney general. One lawyer, Bernard Nash, the self-proclaimed “godfather” of the small club of law practices that wooed attorneys general, was particularly aggressive in seeking her out.
Mr. Nash worked quickly to build a rapport with Ms. Bondi, engaging with her twice at industry events in her first months as attorney general and inviting her to a special lobbyist-funded dinner he was hosting for attorneys general at what was then one of the hottest French restaurants in Washington, Michel Richard Citronelle.
Ms. Bondi, the documents obtained by The Times show, was one of many state attorneys general pursued by Mr. Nash and his team. But these emails show that Ms. Bondi was among the most receptive to Mr. Nash’s appeals.
Accretive, a health care bill collection company, was under investigation in Minnesota for abusive tactics, including approaching patients in the emergency room for payment. Accretive hired Mr. Nash’s team to make sure other attorneys general in other states, including Florida, did not follow suit.
Again, Mr. Nash’s firm prevailed, later boasting in marketing materials that “we persuaded A.G.s not to sue Accretive Health.”
The Times asked Ms. Bondi, when she was attorney general, about these efforts. She said the lobbyists’ appeals had no effect on her actions. “My office aggressively protects Floridians from unfair and deceptive business practices, and absolutely no access to me or my staff is going to have any bearing on my efforts to protect Floridians,” she said in a statement at the time.
These appeals to Ms. Bondi to not pursue various investigations were often paired with donations and free travel.
Mr. Nash’s firm, for example, helped cover the bill to charter a plane to fly Ms. Bondi and other attorneys general to Mackinac Island in Michigan for a meeting of the Republican Attorneys General Association, where they stayed at the famed Grand Hotel.
Attorneys general in Washington State, Oregon and Vermont were at the time investigating 5-Hour Energy, a caffeinated drink company, and they would later file a lawsuit accusing the company of deceptive marketing. The suit resulted in settlements or court orders requiring the company to pay millions of dollars in fines and reimburse some states for the cost of the investigation.
During the Mackinac Island trip, Mr. Nash’s team urged Ms. Bondi to avoid the matter and nudge other Republican attorneys general to do the same, according to two people who attended the event, who were not authorized to speak publicly because the conversations were supposed to be confidential. ETC Capital, an investment fund controlled by the owner of the 5-Hour Energy brand, then donated $10,000 to a political action committee run by Ms. Bondi as she was starting her re-election effort.
Mr. Hughes, the spokesman for Mr. Trump’s transition, did not respond to specific questions about each of these cases, but said in a statement that “Pam Bondi executed her duties as attorney general of Florida with complete integrity.”
Ms. Bondi’s political action committee, And Justice for All, also took in a $25,000 donation the same month, in September 2013, from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The check was signed by Mr. Trump several weeks after New York State sued Trump University, accusing him of deceptive marketing practices. The civil suit ultimately resulted in a $25 million settlement with the state.
Again, Ms. Bondi’s office was one of several state attorneys general, including Kamala Harris, then the attorney general in California, who decided not to take up the matter. Mr. Trump also co-hosted a fund-raising event at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach resort, for Ms. Bondi, along with Mr. Nash. Among the other sponsors was Brian Ballard, then a prominent Florida lobbyist, who would soon become her boss.
A Favor for Carnival
Ms. Bondi began work as a partner at Mr. Ballard’s firm early in 2019, 14 days after her second term as attorney general ended. She left the firm recently, Mr. Ballard said.
Mr. Ballard, who had run Mr. Trump’s Florida presidential campaign fund-raising effort, followed Mr. Trump to Washington in 2017, setting up his own new office just three blocks from the White House. His federal lobbying client list rose from zero to nearly 100by the time Ms. Bondi joined the firm.
Ms. Bondi almost immediately began lobbying for Carnival, which had been trying to persuade the Trump administration to continue to protect it from lawsuits that American businesses sought to file over its use of piers in Havana.
The dispute dates back to 1959, when the communist government there seized property owned by American investors. In the years since, they have argued that they deserve compensation, particularly if American companies, like a cruise line, earn money by using these facilities.
A United States law was passed in 1996 allowing these claims, but the federal government had never authorized the first of the lawsuits to be filed. Advisers to Mr. Trump, spurred on by Cuban Americans in Florida, were threatening to open these floodgates.
Mr. Arison, Carnival’s chairman, had longstanding ties with Mr. Trump. The company had sponsored Mr. Trump’s reality television show, “The Apprentice.” But Mr. Arison still believed he needed help and turned to Ms. Bondi and Mr. Ballard, as well as Ms. Bondi’s sister-in-law, Tandy Bondi, then an in-house lobbyist for Carnival.
“We could be deemed as ‘trafficking’ in confiscated property, and the potential penalty to my company alone could be over $600 million,” Mr. Arison wrote in an email to the White House that was marked confidential, but obtained by The Times through court records.
He noted that “Pam Bondi and Brian Ballard have been working with your staff” on the matter, but that no resolution had been reached. He was getting anxious, the emails show, and he wanted Mr. Trump’s assistance in blocking any moves that could cut his profits.
Sitting in the White House in late April 2019, Mr. Arison made his case to Mr. Trump. The conversation included Ms. Bondi, as well as Mr. Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser, among others, the court records show.
“I’d really like to help these people and still get what we want to get done and punish Cuba,” Mr. Trump said, according to testimony by Mr. Arison.
Ultimately, though, Ms. Bondi and her team failed in their effort.
Mr. Trump’s appointees banned American cruise ships from traveling to Cuba. The Trump administration also opened the doorto the lawsuits, and several immediately targeted Carnival, leading to a 2022 ruling that ordered the company to pay at least $110 million in damages. (The matter is still under appeal, and Carnival won the most recent round, in October.)
Foreign Influence
Across Washington, in recent years, a particular kind of lobbyist has seen a surge in new business: the well-known lawyer, with close connections to power, who uses these ties to free foreign clients from sanctions, human rights scrutiny or criminal charges.
It is lucrative work that is often easier than getting Congress to enact legislation. And it is a niche that Ms. Bondi occupied after joining Mr. Ballard’s firm.
The work began with the Russian money manager Marsha Lazareva, who had been arrested in Kuwait in 2017 on charges that she and others at her company had embezzled or siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in government funds.
Ms. Lazareva was sentenced to at least 10 years in prison and more than $30 million in repayments and fines — birthing an elaborate international public relations and lobbying campaign intended to set her free.
Ms. Bondi joined a legal and public relations team that included Louis Freeh, who was the F.B.I. director during the Clinton administration, and Cherie Blair, the wife of the former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.
“She has been unjustly locked up,” Ms. Bondi said of Ms. Lazareva in a 2019 Fox News interview with Pete Hegseth, who was then an anchor there and is now Mr. Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary.
That advocacy, commissioned by Ms. Lazareva’s Kuwaiti investment firm — and which included lobbying Congress, the State Department and the White House to pressure Kuwait to release her — also generated $350,000 in fees for Ballard Partners.
But Ms. Lazareva has not managed to have the charges dismissed or overturned. U.N. arbitrators also declined a request by her lawyers to intervene. She is now appealing the arbitration finding in a Paris court.
Charles Buderi, a London-based lawyer representing Kuwait, in an interview with a legal publication, said Ms. Lazareva continued “to wage her aggressive and unsubstantiated P.R. campaign and advance conspiracy theories that never had any credibility.”
Ms. Bondi’s other international clients included the embassy of Qatar in Washington, which paid her firm $115,000 a month to improve Qatar’s often-criticized human rights record in advance of hosting the 2022 World Cup.
She also represented Major League Baseball, according to filings, as the league was pushing Mr. Trump to reconsider a decision that blocked a deal to ease Cuban players’ path to United States teams. The effort resulted in another White House meeting, which Ms. Bondi participated in, according to Mr. Ballard.
Overall, lobbying disclosure records show that Ms. Bondi was registered to represent a total of 30 clients between 2019 and 2024, targeting the White House, Congress and 12 federal agencies, according to a tally of the filings by Public Citizen and Accountable, two nonprofit watchdog groups.
The list included major corporations like Uber, Amazon and General Motors, as well as companies like Geo Group, the private prison firm that has large contracts with the Justice Department.
But in an interview, Mr. Ballard could not recall any specific tasks that Ms. Bondi took up for these large corporate clients. Representatives for Amazon, Uber and General Motors declined to discuss her work in any detail or said they could not recall any work she did. Geo Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, which is tracking the potential conflicts of interests created by Mr. Trump’s return to the White House, said the lobbying record suggested Ms. Bondi would have an array of conflicts of interest if she is confirmed.
“Many of those companies are under investigation or being sued by or are contractors to the federal government,” Mr. Weissman said. “The attorney general is supposed to be the attorney general for all Americans, not for 30 companies that she was registered to lobby for.”
Mr. Ballard said he expected that Ms. Bondi, if confirmed, would recuse herself from matters on which she worked directly as a lobbyist, but not necessarily from those involving companies that hired the firm in any capacity.
“We represent such a broad array of American business,” Mr. Ballard said. “It would be tough to recuse yourself from everything.”
Eric Lipton is an investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals. More about Eric Lipton
Kate Kelly covers money, policy and influence for The Times. More about Kate Kelly
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