Everything You Need to Know About Trump’s New AG Pick

(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Just hours after former Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) bowed out as the US attorney general nominee, President-elect Donald Trump announced a replacement: Pam Bondi. As another longtime staunch Trump ally, Bondi may be everything the incoming president wants in an AG without all the scandal Gaetz brought to the table. The right loves her, and the left fears her, but who is this woman who may soon be in charge of the Department of Justice? Here’s everything you need to know about Pam Bondi but were afraid to ask.

An Impressive Résumé

The best place to start is where she has been and what she has accomplished – and that’s quite an impressive list. After more than 18 years as a Florida prosecutor, Pam Bondi burst onto the political scene in 2010 after she was elected to be the Sunshine State’s first female attorney general, a job she held until 2019. If confirmed, she’ll be just the third woman to serve as US attorney general.

In her time as Florida’s AG, Bondi worked to end the opioid epidemic and shut down pill mills. Her approach resulted in a 52 per cent decline in oxycodone deaths and an overall decline of 23 per cent in prescription drug overdose deaths in Florida between 2011 and 2014, then-CDC Director Tom Frieden explained at the 2016 National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit. An “unprecedented national achievement,” he called it. She also tackled human trafficking and pushed the state’s crime lab to clear the backlog of more than 13,000 unprocessed sexual assault kits.

Bondi overhauled the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and obtained more than $870 million in settlements and judgments. She also fought for consumer rights. In her tenure, she helped recover more than one billion dollars in consumer protection, antitrust, and false claims settlements.

She has since made a name for herself as a Trump ally. She served on his defense team during the first impeachment trial and co-chaired his 2020 re-election campaign. Bondi also served as chair for the Center of Litigation and co-chair of the Center of Law and Justice for the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank established in 2021 by former Trump advisers.

Pam Bondi – The Left’s New Boogeyman?

Even CNN Legal Analyst Elie Honig had to admit that “Pam Bondi is, without a question, qualified to be Attorney General.” He went on to explain that Bondi’s level of experience is “on par with, or better than most United States Attorneys General that we’ve seen over the past 50 years or so.”

As impressive as her résumé is, however, you won’t read about it in the “what to know about Pam Bondi” articles published by most left-leaning news outlets. About halfway down the AP’s piece, for example, Bondi’s work gets a one-line mention: “As Florida’s top prosecutor, Bondi stressed human trafficking issues and urged tightening state laws against traffickers.” That, plus the fact she was the state’s first female attorney general, is about all the credit she gets.

The AP and the many establishment news outlets that seem to practically copy and paste from it focus instead on Bondi’s loyalty to Trump, her work as a lobbyist, and “a few of her own political issues.” Bondi issued an apology in 2013 after she looked to delay the execution of a convicted killer “because it conflicted with a fundraiser for her reelection campaign.” She also received a $25,000 campaign contribution in 2013 from Donald Trump, around the same time her office declined to participate in New York’s lawsuit over fraud allegations involving Trump University.

To quote Fox News’ Jesse Watters, “You know Bondi’s a winner because the deep state sounds awfully nervous.” Indeed, the AP does come out and say that, if confirmed, “Bondi would instantly become one of the most closely watched members of Trump’s cabinet, given the Republican’s threat to pursue retribution against perceived adversaries and concern among Democrats that he will look to bend the Justice Department to his will.” A bit farther down, the outlet claims Trump “sought to use the powers of the Justice Department to advance his own interests,” and that Bondi “appears likely to oblige him.”

College professor and MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson revealed the real reason the left fears her. In a talk with MSNBC host Ari Melber, Johnson explained: “Pam Bondi is exactly what I was saying in the last segment that we should all fear, because she’s competent. We may not agree with her ideologically, but she actually knows how to do this job.” He continued: “So if anyone on the Democratic side or anyone who cared about liberty or justice was thinking ‘Well maybe Matt Gaetz will screw this up and that will give us time,’ no. Pam Bondi knows what she is doing.”

Regardless of where one falls on the ideological spectrum, the thoroughly freaked-out progressive left is right about a few things: Pam Bondi is fiercely loyal to Donald Trump. She’s also far more likely to see a successful confirmation than the scandal-mired Matt Gaetz. And she does, in fact, know what she’s doing.

This article was originally published by Liberty Nation News.