United States Attorney General Pam Bondi has emerged as one of the most embattled top officials in the administration of United States President Donald Trump, amid fallout over her handling of disclosures related to the sex trafficking case of billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump has so far stood by Bondi, who has been instrumental in his reshaping of the Department of Justice, but the president has continued to voice frustration that public fixation on the scandal – and criticism from both within his base and among his opponents – has refused to die down.
Democrats have adopted the issue as their latest political cudgel, while Republicans in Congress have promised to continue their own probe when they return from summer recess, with plans to hear testimony from Bondi, as well as subpoena the case files and testimony from Epstein confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.
Two lawmakers are even pushing a bill that would compel Bondi to release the documents in question, a move Republican Thomas Massie has said is aimed at “justice for the victims and transparency for Americans”.
So who is Bondi and how did the 59-year-old attorney general come to be one of Trump’s most loyal cabinet members?
What did Bondi do before becoming attorney general?
Bondi spent 18 years as a public prosecutor in Hillsborough County, Florida before breaking into statewide office.
The lengthy career gave her more direct prosecutorial experience than any preceding US attorney general, according to the Heritage Foundation, the conservative group that has had an outsized role in shaping the policy of Trump’s second term.
Speaking last year to the Tampa Bay Times, former colleagues recounted Bondi’s reputation for jury-turning charisma that saw her quickly rise through the ranks of felony prosecutions.
But it was regular media appearances as a legal analyst on national news networks that helped her to build public recognition, which was credited with her victory in Florida’s open attorney general race in 2010. Bondi, who took office in 2011, was also buoyed by the endorsement of former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
As attorney general, Bondi led crusades against so-called “pill mills”, clinics that loosely prescribe pain medications, while leading some Republican pet causes, including a multi-state effort to overturn former President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act.
She also led efforts to uphold Florida’s ban on same sex marriage, before its nationwide legalisation by Supreme Court order in 2015, as well as the ability for same sex couples to adopt.
During that period, Bondi sought to establish herself as a champion against sex trafficking and child sex abuse, launching the state’s council on human trafficking and an investigation into past abuse by Catholic priests.
As Florida’s top cop, she also had her first brush with Epstein, with critics accusing her of remaining willfully silent on a controversial non-prosecution agreement Epstein and his co-conspirators had struck with her predecessor.
They have said Bondi could have intervened as victims launched lawsuits challenging the deal, which saw Epstein plead guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution but serve only months in prison.
“But Bondi kept her distance from the state’s most prominent sex-trafficking case, even as Epstein’s victims pleaded with the courts to invalidate provisions of his non-prosecution agreement and filed lawsuits alleging he abused them when he was on work release from jail,” wrote Mary Ellen Klas, a Bloomberg opinion writer and former Miami Herald Bureau Chief.
“Her inaction helped to perpetuate what victims describe as a government cover-up that, along with Epstein’s death, has robbed those victims of their chance to get answers and hold their abusers to account,” she wrote.
How did Bondi enter Trump’s orbit?
Bondi’s connections with Trump drew scrutiny even before he entered office, after it was revealed in 2016 that authorities had launched an ethics probe related to the soon-to-be president. At question was whether Bondi had solicited contributions from Trump in 2013, as her office was weighing joining a lawsuit against Trump University.
Her office denied any wrongdoing, and the investigation was later dropped.
Despite those early contacts, Bondi was not an early adherent to Trump’s presidential ambitions or his nascent “Make America Great Again” movement.
Instead, she initially supported former Florida Governor Jeb Bush in the 2016 Republican primary. When Jeb dropped out of the race, she threw her lot in with Trump. From there, things accelerated quickly.
While still Florida’s attorney general, Bondi served on Trump’s first White House transition team. She left her post in Florida in 2019 and soon joined the Ballard Lobbyist group, representing the interests of Amazon, General Motors, and Uber, among others.
From there, she joined the White House legal team, defending the president during his first impeachment trial in the US Senate, in which Trump was accused of conditioning weapons to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on then political opponent Biden.
After Trump’s election loss, Bondi was among those spearheading unfounded claims that the vote was marred by widespread fraud. She helped coordinate former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s infamous news conference at the Four Seasons Landscaping in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she flatly and falsely claimed that Trump had “won Pennsylvania”.
She went on to chair the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a pro-Trump think tank that oversaw “a series of concerning lawsuits in recent years, particularly in the voting rights and elections arena”, as described by the Brennan Center for Justice. Publicly, she also floated prosecuting career federal law enforcement officials who investigated Trump.
In criticising her appointment, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in January said that Bondi had “the ultimate qualification” to be Trump’s attorney general: “loyalty”.
Bondi’s tenure at the Justice Department
That loyalty has generated much consternation since Bondi took office, with opponents accusing her of shaping the country’s top law enforcement agency in Trump’s likeness.
That has included hundreds of layoffs at the department, including investigators and prosecutors in the two federal criminal cases lodged against Trump before his November election victory last year.
She has also launched a task force to probe those investigations, while publicly decrying what she has framed as a conspiracy against Trump amid the career staff, saying the staff of the FBI and Justice Department were rife with employees “who despise Donald Trump, despise us”, as she told Fox News.
More recently, she launched a strike force to investigate how the intelligence community, under former President Obama, handled information related to Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election, in what some have seen as an attempt to distract from the Epstein imbroglio.
She has also announced a misconduct complaint against federal Judge James Boasberg, escalating a standoff over judges who have ruled against Trump’s early actions, most notably his use of the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members with little requirement for proof.
But it was Bondi’s embrace of theories pushed by Trump’s staunchest supporters that has landed her in the current predicament. In February, she brazenly told Fox News that she had Epstein’s long-sought “client list” – thought to contain the names of the powerful figures the billionaire blackmailed via his sex scheme – “sitting on my desk right now”.
Months later, the White House would say Bondi was referring to the entirety of Epstein’s case files, and not specifically the list long sought by MAGA’s most influential voices.
Source: Aljazeera
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