After Matt Gaetz flames out, Donald Trump nominates scandal plagued Pam Bondi for Attorney General
Matt Gaetz lasted less than one Scaramucci as Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, before Gaetz’s lifetime of scandals forced him to step aside. Now Trump has nominated his replacement, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Suffice it to say this she’s also fully unqualified.
Pam Bondi took a large campaign contribution from Donald Trump while she was investigating Trump University, and then she ended up taking no action against Trump University. While she was never criminally prosecuted for it because it wasn’t explicitly stated as quid pro quo, it was obviously a de facto bribe. This was underscored when another state Attorney General did expose Trump University’s fraud scheme and shut the fake school down.
It’s tough to predict what will happen with the Pam Bondi nomination. She was a key figure in the Trump University scandal, and while that’s since been buried in all of Trump’s other scandals, it’ll now come back front and center. Bondi also has other corruption scandals and extremism scandals. Bondi was also a registered foreign agent of Qatar as of 2020. But she’s not an alleged underage sex trafficker like Gaetz, so who knows what this Republican Senate will do.
In any case let’s be clear that this was obviously not Trump’s plan all along. If he’d wanted Pam Bondi as his Attorney General all along, he’d have simply nominated her – and she’d likely have quietly slid through as a recess appointment. But now that Trump has tried and failed to get Gaetz through, there’s going to be all kinds of public pressure and media attention on the remainder of Trump’s picks. Whatever Bondi’s odds are of getting confirmed, they’re lower than if Trump had simply nominated her to begin with.
