Who is Trump's attorney general pick Pam Bondi? The former prosecutor is a close Trump ally

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's pick to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, faced questions on Capitol Hill Wednesday over her loyalty to the Republican president-elect, who has vowed to use the agency to pursue revenge on his perceived political enemies.

The former Florida attorney general and corporate lobbyist told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that politics would play no part in her decision-making as the country's chief federal law enforcement officer, but also refused to rule out the potential for investigations into Trump's adversaries.

If confirmed to lead the department that charged the once and future president in two separate criminal cases, Bondi would become one of the most closely scrutinized members of Trump's cabinet.

Here's what to know about Bondi:

___

She's a close Trump ally and long-time defender

Bondi has been a fixture in Trump's orbit for years, and a regular defender of the president-elect on news programs amid his legal woes.

''The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones,'' Bondi said in a 2023 Fox News appearance. ''The investigators will be investigated.''

As Democrats repeatedly questioned Wednesday whether she would maintain a Justice Department that's independent from the White House, Bondi insisted that ''no one should be prosecuted for political purposes.'' But she also refused to say what she would do if the president directed her to drop a case or answer whether she would investigate Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel who charged Trump.

Bondi traveled to New York last May to support Trump in court while he stood trial in his hush money criminal case. Trump was sentenced last week to no punishment in that case after his jury conviction on 34 felony counts.

After Trump's guilty verdict in that case, Bondi said during another Fox News appearance — alongside Trump's pick for FBI director, Kash Patel — that ''a tremendous amount of trust is lost in the justice system tonight.'' She added: ''The American people see through it.''

On a radio show last August, she compared special counsel Jack Smith to ''a rabid dog'' after he brought a new 2020 election interference indictment against Trump in the wake of the Supreme Court's immunity ruling. Smith abandoned that case — and the separate classified documents case — after Trump's November victory, citing Justice Department policy not to prosecute sitting presidents.

Florida's first female attorney general

Bondi was first elected Florida attorney general in 2010, defeating Democratic state Sen. Dan Gelber after earning the endorsement of former Republican Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

As Florida attorney general, Bondi led a challenge brought by more than two dozen states to President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld the health care law. Bondi also fought to uphold Florida's ban on same-sex marriage — arguing that marriage should be defined by each state.

One of her top priorities as attorney general was going after so-called pill mills, or clinics that hand out large amounts of prescription painkillers and helped fuel the country's opioid crisis.

''I did my best to keep Florida safe, to continue to stand up for victims of crime, and to fight the opioid crisis and the drug crisis that was not only faced Florida, but this entire country,'' Bondi said Wednesday.

Bondi faced an ethics probe after she personally solicited a 2013 political contribution from Trump as her office was weighing whether to join New York in suing over fraud allegations involving Trump University.

Trump cut a $25,000 check to a political committee supporting Bondi from his family's charitable foundation, in violation of legal prohibitions against charities supporting partisan political activities. After the check came in, Bondi's office nixed suing Trump's company for fraud, citing insufficient grounds to proceed.

Both Trump and Bondi denied wrongdoing, the state's ethics commission tossed the complaints and a prosecutor assigned by then-GOP Gov. Rick Scott determined there was insufficient evidence to support bribery charges over the donation.

Before becoming Florida attorney general, Bondi spent 18 years in the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office, prosecuting cases ''ranging from domestic violence to capital murder,'' according to her bio at Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm she joined in 2019.

She spent years lobbying on behalf of companies such as Amazon

Democrats have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest posed by Bondi's lobbying work for corporations and other entities that could face scrutiny by the Justice Department.

Records show that between 2019 and 2024, Bondi was registered to represent 30 clients, including businesses such as Uber and Amazon during her time at Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm headed by Brian Ballard, who has ties to Trump, according to advocacy group Public Citizen.

She led Ballard Partners' corporate regulatory compliance practice, which focuses on helping Fortune 500 companies ''implement best practices that proactively address public policy challenges such as human trafficking, opioid abuse and personal data privacy,'' according to her Ballard Partners bio.

She registered as a foreign agent for the government of Qatar for work related to anti-human-trafficking efforts leading up to the World Cup, held in 2022. She also represented the KGL Investment Company KSCC, a Kuwaiti firm also known as KGLI. The firm paid Ballard $300,000 in 2019 to lobby the White House, National Security Council, State Department and Congress on immigration policy, human rights and economic sanctions issues.

Beyond her lobbying work, she also served as chair of the Center for Litigation and co-chair for the Center for Law and Justice at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank set up by former Trump administration staffers to lay the groundwork for his potential second term. Her work in that role included filing a brief in the Supreme Court in support of a public high school football coach who was fired for praying on the field after games.

She was part of Trump's first impeachment trial defense team

Bondi stepped away from lobbying in 2020 to defend Trump during his first impeachment trial against allegations that Trump abused the power of his office when he pressured Ukraine's president during a phone call to investigate then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, ahead of the 2020 election.

Trump, who denied any wrongdoing, was impeached in the U.S. House of Representatives and acquitted in the U.S. Senate.

Bondi was brought on to bolster the White House's messaging and communications. Trump and his allies sought to delegitimize the impeachment from the start, aiming to brush off the whole thing as a farce.

Bondi backed Trump's effort to challenge the 2020 election results

Bondi supported Trump's efforts to challenge his 2020 loss to Biden, traveling in the days after the election to Pennsylvania, where she claimed the campaign had evidence of ''cheating.''

Bondi wouldn't directly answer when asked Wednesday whether Trump lost the 2020 election, only going so far initially to say that Biden is the president. She later said she accepted the results of the election, but also suggested there was fraud, saying she saw ''many things'' on the ground in Pennsylvania.

Bondi appeared at a press conference in Philadelphia the day after the 2020 election alongside then-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. The former New York City mayor has since lost his law license in New York and Washington, D.C., after pursuing false claims that Trump made about his election loss.

At the press conference, Giuliani suggested that bogus ballots could be flooding in from ''Mars'' or nearby Camden, New Jersey — or, he said: ''Joe Biden could have voted 50 times, as far as we know, or 5,000 times." Bondi said poll workers in Philadelphia were keeping Republican poll watchers too far back and preventing them from doing their jobs.

''We've won Pennsylvania and we want every vote to be counted in a fair way,'' Bondi said.

The next day during an appearance on Fox & Friends, Bondi declared there was ''evidence of cheating."

''We are not going anywhere until they declare that we won Pennsylvania,'' Bondi said, alleging there were ''fake ballots coming in late." But when the anchor pressed her again on those ''fake ballots,'' she responded: ''There could be — that's the problem...We don't know.''

Bondi went on to claim that ballots were ''dumped,'' and that ''people were receiving ballots that were dead.''