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US Senate confirms Trump nominee Pam Bondi as attorney general US Senate confirms Trump nominee Pam Bondi as attorney general
(32 minutes later)
Bondi, 59, approved 54-46 as staunch political ally of president propelled to top perch of US law enforcement Bondi approved 54-46 as staunch political ally of president propelled to top perch of US law enforcement
The Republican-led Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as the new US attorney general on Tuesday, propelling one of Donald Trump’s staunchest political allies to the top perch of American law enforcement. The US Senate confirmed Pam Bondi on Tuesday as the next attorney general to steer the justice department through Donald Trump’s second term and his clear intent to turn it into an extension of his executive power, especially as a cudgel against his personal and political adversaries.
The 54-46 vote to confirm of the former Florida state attorney general will help Trump solidify his control over the US justice department, which has recently seen sweeping cuts targeting prosecutors and FBI agents who investigated the January 6 2021 attack on the Capitol by the president’s supporters. The 54 to 46 vote to confirm Bondi was largely across party lines. All Republicans voted to confirm and all but one Democratic senator, John Fetterman, voted against.
Democratic senator John Fetterman joined all 53 Republicans in voting for Bondi. Bondi takes charge at a tumultuous time for the department, which has already been making sweeping personnel changes across senior leadership positions and last week fired the prosecutors who worked on the criminal cases against Trump at the direction of the president himself.
Bondi, 59, vowed to maintain the department’s independence during a confirmation hearing last month, telling lawmakers she will not inject politics into criminal or civil investigations. The upheaval means that Bondi faces an array of challenges. As attorney general, she serves at the pleasure of the president and needs to retain Trump’s confidence to survive. But her predecessors in Trump’s first term found it tricky to please Trump without crossing ethical or legal lines.
But lawmakers continue to harbor concerns about whether she will resist potentially improper or illegal orders from Trump, after the firings of dozens of prosecutors who pursued criminal charges against him. Trump replaced his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, after he recused himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia and, later, soured on his last attorney general, William Barr, after he refused to endorse Trump’s false 2020 election claims.
After entering office on 20 January, Trump signed an executive order blasting what he called the “weaponizing” of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies and ordered the attorney general to “review the activities of all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority.“ During her confirmation hearing, Bondi insisted the justice department would remain independent by continuing the policy that restricts interactions with the White House, and would not allow the FBI to pursue a list of Trump’s perceived enemies, as identified by FBI director nominee Kash Patel.
Bondi, who spent decades as a prosecutor, represented Trump during his first impeachment trial. She has also echoed some of his false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. But both those pledges – perhaps the two most central for the justice department to resist political pressure from the White House – have already come under scrutiny in the days since Bondi vowed to follow the no-contacts policy and that there would be no “enemies list” under her tenure.
The incoming attorney general holds a stake in Trump’s media company, the Trump Media and Technology Group, according to financial disclosures she filed with the Office of Government Ethics. Morale has suffered among the department’s 115,000 employees as a result of the mass purges and the expectation that the department could in effect become an extension of the White House once Bondi is sworn in and if Trump more overtly leans on her to do his bidding.
Bondi was Trump’s second pick for the top US law enforcement job. His first choice, former US congressman Matt Gaetz, resigned from Congress and withdrew his name from consideration just before a House of Representatives ethics report found that he had paid women for sex and drugs and obstructed Congress. The FBI, which is overseen by the justice department, has been battered by deep anxiety over its future and whether Bondi will actually rein in the more extreme impulses of Patel, a close and fiercely loyal ally of Trump’s, should he be confirmed as FBI director.
Gaetz so far is the only Trump cabinet nominee to end his bid for the office. Senate committees on Tuesday advanced the nominations of two of Trump’s most controversial nominees, Robert F Kennedy Jr to be the nation’s top health official and Tulsi Gabbard to serve as its top spy. Last week, the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, instructed the interim FBI director Brian Driscoll to produce a list of FBI agents who worked on cases against January 6 rioters and their respective roles in order to inform personnel decisions.
The list is widely expected inside the FBI to be used as the basis to fire agents and other employees who worked on cases that have angered Trump, after Bove fired scores of senior career officials who led components involved in the Trump criminal cases.
In the memo outlining the list, which was sent to the justice department as ordered earlier on Tuesday, Driscoll also confirmed that he had been told to fire eight senior executive officials at FBI headquarters unless they chose to take early retirement instead.
Bondi graduated in 1987 from the University of Florida and earned her law degree in 1990 from Stetson University. She was a county prosecutor in Florida before successfully running for Florida attorney general in 2010 in part due to regular appearances on Fox News.
In 2013, during Bondi’s tenure as Florida attorney general, her office received nearly two dozen complaints about Trump University and her aides have said she once considered joining a multi-state lawsuit brought on behalf of students who claimed they had been cheated.
As she was weighing the lawsuit, Bondi’s political action committee received a $25,000 contribution from a non-profit funded by Trump. While Trump and Bondi both deny a quid pro quo, Bondi never joined the lawsuit and Trump had to pay a $2,500 fine for violating tax laws to make the donation.