WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s new choice for US attorney general is a far cry from his previous one.
Trump’s latest pick, Pam Bondi, 59, brings with her the same reputation that former nominee Matt Gaetz had as a Trump loyalist.
But Bondi lacks the personal controversies of Gaetz — a former Florida congressman who had to withdraw in the face of Senate Republican opposition. She also brings with her significant comparable experience from her eight years as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019.
As a result, she is expected to have a far easier path to confirmation.
The telegenic lawyer served on Trump’s defense team in his first Senate impeachment trial in 2020 for pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Biden family — memorably arguing that the Biden family was indeed corrupt and warranted investigation.
Most recently, Bondi has worked for the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank that has been trying to develop new policies that could be implemented in Trump’s second term.
If confirmed, Bondi is expected to be a prominent face of efforts to rein in what Trump, 78, calls the weaponization of the federal government against him — including moving to dismiss a pair of federal criminal cases against him for challenging the results of the 2020 election and allegedly mishandling classified documents.
She is also likely be brought in to battle litigation challenging his efforts to mass-deport illegal migrants, while overseeing efforts to overhaul the FBI, which is part of the Justice Department, and pushing Democrat-led jurisdictions to take a tougher approach to violent crime.
Another pick from Florida
Bondi’s selection was announced Thursday by Trump shortly after Gaetz dropped out as even Senate Republicans demanded to see a draft House Ethics Committee report detailing allegations of sexual misconduct against the former rep. Gaetz has denied the accusations.
She joins other prominent Floridians in the lineup for Trump’s looming return to power, including incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State-designee Marco Rubio and national security adviser-designee Mike Waltz.
Bondi was elected Florida’s attorney general in 2010 and re-elected in 2014 after serving as a prosecutor in Tampa.
Trump touted her focus on violent crime and the opioid epidemic in his announcement of her as his US AG pick.
“Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals, and made the streets safe for Florida Families,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Then, as Florida’s first female Attorney General, she worked to stop the trafficking of deadly drugs, and reduce the tragedy of Fentanyl Overdose Deaths, which have destroyed many families across our Country.
“She did such an incredible job, that I asked her to serve on our Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission during my first Term — We saved many lives!”
In 2018, Bondi sued drugmakers including Purdue Pharma, accusing them of a “strategic campaign of misrepresentations” that hooked her constituents on painkillers, leading to their addiction and, in many cases, death — after taking part in an earlier multistate settlement with some of the companies.
She later expanded the lawsuit to include Walgreens and CVS Pharmacy.
In 2017, she co-authored a Trump presidential commission report on the opioid crisis that included recommendations to address the then-nascent threat of fentanyl, which ultimately caused a massive spike in deaths under President Biden, killing more than 223,000 Americans during Biden’s first three years in office, according to preliminary federal estimates.
While Florida’s AG, she sued in an unsuccessful attempt by Republican-led states to overturn the individual health insurance mandate in then-President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law, which the US Supreme Court upheld in 2012 before Congress repealed it in 2017.
In another significant distinction from Gaetz, who is an outspoken supporter of legalizing marijuana, Bondi in 2014 also opposed a state medical marijuana ballot measure, and in 2018 defended a state ban on smokeable medical marijuana. Still, she later used her powers to allow a cannabis-derived CBD treatment.
As state attorney general, she defended Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage while also casting herself as a defender of gays and lesbians after the 2016 massacre of 49 patrons at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, which was committed by a shooter who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Trump impeachment defender, lobbyist
Bondi burst into the national headlines with her fervent defense of Trump while representing the then-president in January 2020 during his first impeachment trial. Republican senators ultimately acquitted Trump of abusing his office to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.
Bondi went for the jugular and argued that there appeared to be Biden family corruption warranting investigation.
She pointed out in a Senate floor presentation that then-Vice President Joe Biden met with one of son Hunter Biden’s business partners, Devon Archer, in 2014 while leading the US policy on Ukraine. This was around the time Hunter and Archer joined the board of a corrupt natural gas company, where the then-second son earned a salary of up to $1 million despite no industry experience.
“There was a basis to talk about this, to raise this issue, and that is enough,” Bondi said after reading through press accounts and government communications raising corruption concerns involving the Bidens and the company, Burisma.
Later reporting from The Post revealed that then-VP Biden met with Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi at an April 2015 dinner in Washington and that Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitchko, with whom Joe Biden repeatedly met, was working with Hunter in August 2015 on a Burisma geothermal subsidiary that the second son led.
Bondi in 2019 joined the DC lobbying firm Ballard Partners, where her clients included Amazon, General Motors and Uber.
Those ties could create potential conflicts of interest for her if she becomes US AG — particularly as it pertains to Big Tech issues, though it’s possible she would recuse herself in such cases.
Federal filings show that Bondi earned $200,000 in 2020 and 2021 repping Amazon, which has faced bipartisan federal antitrust criticism.