After some nomination drama — with Trump’s original attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, removing himself from consideration amid scandal — the president-elect then named former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as his pick to lead the DOJ. Though some breathed a sigh of relief that a DOJ led by Gaetz is no longer on the table, Bondi is by no means a better choice. And in some regards may be worse.
Bondi is a longtime close ally of Trump. She was involved in his 2016 campaign and was one of his main attorneys during his 2019 impeachment over his quid pro quo phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
She also occasionally advised Trump on pardons during his first administration — including the woman who orchestrated one of the biggest Medicare frauds in history.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Bondi was one of several Trump lawyers who was spreading voting conspiracy theories and false allegations of election fraud. She was part of the Trump campaign’s legal effort to challenge ballots in Pennsylvania in 2020 and went on to spread false allegations of election cheating in the state.
But what makes her a more troubling AG pick than Gaetz is her work after Trump’s first presidency.
Since 2021, Bondi has been chair of the America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) center for litigation and co-chair of its center for law and justice. As one of AFPI’s leading figures, Bondi spearheaded the group’s efforts to disenfranchise voters around the country. Under Bondi, AFPI led a multistate legal effort to overturn a pro-voting Biden executive order that expands voting access. AFPI also got involved in several election lawsuits in Arizona, challenging parts of the state’s Elections Procedural Manual.
I bring all of this up to quantify why I think Bondi is a more troubling pick than Gaetz to lead the DOJ. It’s no secret that Trump wants to radically reform the DOJ.
When Trump launched his third presidential campaign in 2022, he promised to “immediately demand voter ID, same day voting, and only paper ballots if elected.” Now that he has been reelected, Trump picked perhaps the best person, in Bondi, to help fulfill that promise.