Senators will begin their public deliberations over President-elect Donald Trump‘s choice to lead the Justice Department on Wednesday as former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi begins two days of confirmation hearings.
Bondi spent eight years as Florida’s top law enforcement official and was the first woman to serve in the post, prioritizing issues like curbing drug abuse, advocating against human trafficking and pushing back against the Obama administration’s signature health care plan.
She has also been a longtime Trump ally, having served on his opioid and drug abuse task force and later joining the defense team during his first Senate impeachment trial. Bondi also falsely claimed Trump “won Pennsylvania” in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and later worked at a pro-Trump policy firm on legal issues and as a lobbyist.
Now, Trump has picked her to serve in one of the highest-profile roles in the incoming administration, if she’s confirmed by the Senate.
Bondi took over as Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department after his first choice, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., withdrew from consideration after his nomination was jeopardized by allegations of sexual misconduct, including having sex with a minor (Gaetz has denied the allegations). After weeks of chaos surrounding Gaetz’s nomination, Republicans have greeted Bondi’s ascension with praise, and there have been no indications she’ll struggle to gain support from GOP senators.
Democrats are expected to zero in on her time at a prominent lobbying firm, with Sen. Dick Durbin, of Illinois, claiming in recent days that the Senate Judiciary Committee hasn’t received a full accounting of her work with foreign clients.
Democratic senators are also expected to probe her comments about the 2020 presidential election, days after Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith released a report defending his investigation of Trump that led to Trump’s being charged with trying to overturn the election. (Those charges were dismissed after Trump’s election, stemming from a Justice Department policy not to prosecute a sitting president.)
And they’re likely to raise questions about Bondi’s independence as the prospective leader of the Justice Department. Trump and his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, publicly sparred over Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. And Trump’s campaign rhetoric, in which he and allies have warned that political opponents could or should face criminal charges, has raised concerns about whether the Justice Department would follow through on that sentiment.
When Trump announced Bondi as his pick for attorney general, he wrote that while the “partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans — Not anymore. Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again.”
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” last month, Trump said that he would defer to Bondi on whether to investigate people like Smith and that “I’m not going to instruct her” whether to launch investigations.
