Donald Trump’s selection of Pam Bondi to be the next attorney general merits caution but not panic. She is amply qualified, on paper, to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement official. But Ms. Bondi’s recent public statements, including her false claims about 2020 election fraud and her vow to prosecute Mr. Trump’s perceived political enemies, raise pressing concerns about whether she possesses the independence and credibility necessary to lead the Department of Justice.
If confirmed, Ms. Bondi will wield extraordinary power. In 1940, the attorney general, Robert Jackson, cautioned that prosecutors have “more control over life, liberty and reputation than any other person in America.” As a supervisor explained it to me years ago when I first became a federal prosecutor: “We’re giving you the power to destroy people’s lives. Don’t screw it up.”
As attorney general, Ms. Bondi would oversee 94 regional U.S. attorney’s offices staffed by over 6,000 federal prosecutors, plus the F.B.I.; Drug Enforcement Administration; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; U.S. Marshals Service; and Bureau of Prisons, with an annual budget over $37 billion.
By any objective measure, she is qualified for the job — far more so than Mr. Trump’s first pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, who was never a prosecutor and only briefly practiced law. She spent 18 years as a local prosecutor in Florida and served as the state’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019, focusing especially on shutting down pill mills and prosecuting human traffickers. Dave Aronberg, a Democrat who recently completed his tenure as state attorney for Palm Beach County, publicly said Ms. Bondi is “no political hack” and “believes in the rule of law.”
If anything, Ms. Bondi’s résumé most resembles that of Janet Reno, who spent 15 years as the state attorney for Miami-Dade County (called Dade County at the time) before serving as the U.S. attorney general from 1993 to 2001. That’s not to suggest Ms. Bondi is the next Ms. Reno. During her tenure, Ms. Reno emerged as the most fiercely independent attorney general of the modern era, often to the consternation of the president who had appointed her, Bill Clinton, and the Washington, D.C., power structure.
Ms. Bondi has a history of fierce loyalty to Mr. Trump. She represented him at his first impeachment trial, in 2020. And she has long supported him politically; in a 2016 speech at the Republican National Convention, she gushed about Mr. Trump and, when the crowd began chanting “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton, said, “I love that.”
In 2013, Ms. Bondi solicited and accepted a $25,000 donation from Mr. Trump’s foundation to a political action committee supporting her political prospects; around the same time, as Florida’s attorney general, she elected not to open a formal investigation of Trump University, which had garnered several complaints from Ms. Bondi’s constituents.
Ms. Bondi’s prior relationship with Mr. Trump is relevant but not disqualifying or even historically unusual. Before his confirmation as the U.S. attorney general in 2005, Alberto Gonzales had served as an adviser and White House counsel to George W. Bush. Edwin Meese had worked for Ronald Reagan before he became the attorney general in 1985. Jimmy Carter nominated his childhood friend, Griffin Bell, to the top job at the Justice Department. John F. Kennedy appointed his own brother.
But, more than prior presidents, Mr. Trump has made clear that he expects unwavering devotion from his appointees. And the attorney general more than other cabinet members must at times exercise independence from the president, particularly with respect to criminal charging decisions. The question, then, is whether Ms. Bondi can do that as the attorney general, despite her prior work with and around Mr. Trump, or whether she will enable his worst instincts.
Most problematically, Ms. Bondi publicly supported Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. After the election, she proclaimed that “we won Pennsylvania,” and she invoked “evidence of cheating” and “fake ballots.” Ms. Bondi also went beyond rhetoric; she worked with other Trump advisers to build a strategy in Pennsylvania to use those false claims to challenge the 2020 election results in the courts — unsuccessfully, it turned out.
At her confirmation hearing, Ms. Bondi must explain her 2020 election denialism. Did she know her claims were false at the time? Or was she simply ignorant of the truth? Does she now acknowledge the falsity of her statements? Or does she still believe (wrongly) that the 2020 election was stolen? Does she regret her conduct in any way? Or can we expect more of the same if she becomes our next attorney general?
Ms. Bondi must also answer directly whether she will facilitate Mr. Trump’s openly stated desire for revenge against the politicians and prosecutors who, in his view, have wronged him. At a 2023 conservative political conference, he told an approving crowd: “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
When asked after he won the 2024 election whether he would direct Ms. Bondi to prosecute the special counsel Jack Smith and others, Mr. Trump replied that Mr. Smith was “very corrupt,” though “I’m not going to instruct her to do it.” And Mr. Trump said of former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney and others who had led the House inquiry into Jan. 6, “Honestly, they should go to jail.”
Ms. Bondi has sounded alarmingly similar themes. In August 2023, in the immediate wake of Mr. Trump’s four criminal indictments (and well before her selection for attorney general), Ms. Bondi said on Fox News: “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.” Tellingly, neither she nor Mr. Trump have articulated any actual crime that Mr. Smith, Ms. Cheney or others around them might have committed.
It remains to be seen whether Ms. Bondi will act on these threats if she is confirmed. Core prosecutorial principle — which Ms. Bondi should well understand given her professional experience — holds that criminal investigations should never be initiated based on a hunch or whim, and certainly not on political animus. Longstanding Justice Department policy dictates (fairly uncontroversially) that prosecutors should initiate investigations “when facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that a federal crime has been, is being or will be committed.”
The bar is low, but it serves a vital purpose: prohibition of baseless free-for-all inquisitions into disfavored targets. If Ms. Bondi takes office and respects this fundamental limitation, she’ll live up to the Justice Department’s ideals. If not, she’ll become complicit in the worst of prosecutorial abuses.
Even if Ms. Bondi turns out to be hellbent on revenge, she will encounter formidable guardrails. Conscientious prosecutors at the Justice Department might resign or refuse to work on an improperly predicated case, which would draw media attention and political blowback. If an investigation proceeds, a grand jury can indict only if the prosecutor can present enough evidence to show probable cause that a crime has been committed. If a case gets that far, a judge has the power to dismiss an indictment that lacks sufficient factual basis to proceed to trial. Of course, any defendant has a right to a jury trial, which requires a unanimous finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And any defendant has a right to appeal a conviction.
Still, the attorney general holds nearly unfettered, unilateral power to open criminal investigations, and that act in itself can upend lives, careers, families, finances and reputations. Ms. Bondi’s personal ethics and professional judgment would be all that protect against abuse of the investigative process — especially if Mr. Trump makes good on his promise to reinstitute “Schedule F,” an executive order that could facilitate the termination of nonpolitical, career federal employees, and allow him to appoint political loyalists in their place.
If she becomes the nation’s top law enforcement official, Ms. Bondi can enable Mr. Trump’s worst instincts and persecute his perceived political tormentors. Or she can follow Ms. Reno’s path and stand as an independent bulwark against the president-elect’s oft-threatened abuses of prosecutorial power. That choice will be Ms. Bondi’s alone.
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