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WASHINGTON (CN) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday night that he would nominate former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to be his next U.S. attorney general, just hours after his initial pick Matt Gaetz withdrew his bid.
“I am proud to announce former Attorney General of the great state of Florida, Pam Bondi, as our next Attorney General of the United States,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years where she was very tough on violent criminals, and made the streets safe for Florida families.”
Unlike Gaetz, Bondi has extensive legal experience, graduating from the Stetson Law School in 1990 and working as a lawyer since 1991. She worked as a prosecutor in Hillsborough County, Florida before being elected in 2010 as the first female attorney general of Florida.
She served two terms as Florida attorney general between 2011 and 2019, during which she unsuccessfully sued with 26 other states to overturn Obamacare in Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services.
After leaving office, Bondi joined Washington lobbying firm Ballard Partners and worked as a registered lobbyist for Qatar.
Bondi has been a longtime Trump ally, working as one of Trump’s defense lawyers during his first impeachment trial related to Trump’s withholding of military aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden.
At trial, Bondi repeated Trump’s false claims that President Joe Biden pushed for Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin to be fired to supposedly protect his son Hunter Biden and his role on the board of Ukrainian company Burisma. In reality, Shokin had been under fire for failing to prosecute corrupt politicians.
Bondi recently led the legal arm of the Trump-aligned think tank American First Policy Institute, filing amicus briefs in Trump’s many criminal cases and papering the nation with “election integrity” lawsuits.
In his statement, Trump focused again on his promised “retribution” against the Justice Department for his federal cases.
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans — not anymore,” Trump said. “Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting crime and making America safe again.”
With Bondi’s nomination, the top four positions at the Justice Department have been filled, with Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general, Emil Bove as principal associate deputy attorney general and John Sauer as solicitor general.
Blanche, Bove and Sauer each represented Trump in some capacity throughout his multiple legal cases. Blanche and Bove worked as defense attorneys and Sauer argued Trump’s presidential immunity claims at the Supreme Court in April. The high court later ruled to grant presidents sweeping immunity.
One missing name from Trump’s legal team in John Lauro, who led Trump’s defense in Washington, and has yet to be mentioned for any position in Trump’s administration.
Bondi did not respond to a request for comment.
Her selection suggests that Trump wanted another loyal attorney general like Gaetz, but with more legal experience and less baggage.
Gaetz, a self-described firebrand had become a particularly controversial and unpopular pick for the nation’s next top prosecutor, as he faced a looming House Ethics Committee report into whether he had sex with a 17-year-old, twice, as reported by CNN right before Gaetz dropped out.
In a post on X, Gaetz said he made the decision after meeting with senators on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle,” he wrote, an apparent reference to concerns that the GOP-majority Senate would not confirm him.
The committee has delayed the report’s release, announcing Wednesday it will meet again on Dec. 5 to decide whether to make the report public. Republicans on the committee have insisted the report is not complete.
ABC News first reported Wednesday that the committee had obtained reports that Gaetz had paid more than $10,000 to two women who testified before the committee.
According to exhibits shown during closed-door testimony, Gaetz made at least 27 PayPal and Venmo payments between July 2017 and January 2019 to the two witnesses. They testified that some of the payments were for sex.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Defense, has also come under fire amid reports of sexual assault in 2017, where a woman reportedly told police the former Fox News host took her phone, blocked the hotel room door and refused to let her leave.
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