Trump A.G. Pick Pam Bondi Is About to Regret What She Signed Up For
Of course, the attorney general oversees law enforcement on a host of other matters; she’ll be asked about that as well. But it’s worth noting that Trump doesn’t have any genuine vision for the Justice Department beyond turning it into a vehicle for unshackled state persecution of designated enemies of MAGA. How far he gets will turn heavily on what his consiglieres are willing to do when the corrupt orders really start coming.
Unlike Gaetz, Bondi seems to want to retain a tenuous connection to the purportedly respectable conservative legal movement. During her stint as Florida attorney general, she engaged in questionable practices—such as refraining from joining a lawsuit against Trump University after Trump donated $25,000 to a political committee supporting her—but nonetheless, that’s a major law enforcement job in one of the biggest states in the country. Bondi has also engaged in traditional lobbying and typical conservative legal advocacy. It won’t be easy for Bondi to answer hard questions about what she’ll do as Trump’s minister of retribution.
And Trump will expect her to deliver on all of it. While no one should underestimate what Bondi is capable of, she’ll find herself at loggerheads with Trump eventually. “Trump turned against all his prior attorneys general when they retained a shred of respect for the rule of law,” said Michael Sozan, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “He’s expecting Bondi to be an arsonist. It won’t end well for her. It will be even worse for the American people.”