Pam Bondi becomes the next attorney general at a pivotal moment for the Justice Department, as the second Trump administration starts with sweeping government actions and personnel moves that already have sparked numerous legal challenges and controversies.
The Senate voted 54-46 to confirm Bondi in a nearly party-line vote Tuesday, with praise from Republicans for her background as a prosecutor and deep skepticism from Democrats that she will uphold the independence of the Justice Department. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote for her confirmation.
Bondi will oversee a sprawling department responsible for federal criminal prosecution and a wide array of law enforcement. In the role, she could advocate for certain funding priorities, implement internal changes, and shift policy on topics like immigration, voting rights and antitrust enforcement.
The department will also defend in court some of Trump’s most controversial actions, such as his executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship or a push to freeze grant funding.
She will go into office as the Justice Department has been rocked by reports of the firing or reassigning agency officials since Trump’s inauguration. Some personnel actions, according to reports, target employees involved in the investigations of Trump and the criminal probes of rioters who attacked the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
Internal tensions on the personnel changes have spilled into public view as federal law enforcement groups plea for help from congressional leaders and a group of unnamed FBI employees have filed a lawsuit in federal court.
GOP lawmakers have repeatedly pointed to Bondi’s experience as a prosecutor and her past work as Florida attorney general, but they also say she would bring the proper changes to the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, Bondi has pledged she would push to return the department to “its core mission,” vowing to tackle gangs, drugs, terrorists and the nation’s foreign adversaries.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., in a floor speech Tuesday, praised Bondi as “an experienced prosecutor” who’s earned a reputation “as a tenacious lawyer who’s tough on crime.”
“The American people should be able to trust that the Department of Justice is not targeting Americans based on their political opinions or religious beliefs,” Thune said. “Pam Bondi has promised to get the department back to its core mission: prosecuting crime and protecting Americans from threats to their safety and their freedoms.”
Republicans rallied around Bondi after Trump’s first pick for attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, dropped out amid sexual misconduct allegations and the specter of a then-unreleased ethics report.
Democrats have expressed deep skepticism that Bondi would be able to push back against Trump, striking to the heart of a department that traditionally has maintained independence from the White House. Bondi’s appointment is one of the clearest signs that Trump plans to exert more influence over the department during his second term.
They also raised questions about her work as a lobbyist and called attention to her past comments sowing doubts about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said that Bondi’s record suggests that she would aid in an effort to pack the department with loyalists seeking retribution against Trump’s political rivals.
“I have serious doubts about her willingness to really say no to this president,” Durbin said in a floor speech Tuesday.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said Bondi said a lot of the right things about the independence of the department. But he said things changed when she got to a topic that would have been sensitive to Trump.
“When she hit those topics, it was like watching the plane fly into the Bermuda triangle, and all the navs and comms go crazy. She couldn’t say obvious things, things like, did President Biden win the 2020 election? That’s an easy answer. Yes he did,” Whitehouse said.
At her confirmation hearing, Bondi pledged to uphold the rule of law without regard to the partisan position of a criminal defendant, but on at least one occasion did not rule out prosecuting Trump’s perceived enemies — something Trump called for during his campaign.
In another part of the hearing, Bondi declined to say Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden.
Power struggle
Bondi’s confirmation vote came a day after federal law enforcement groups issued a plea to lawmakers about moves made under the Trump administration.
In a letter to congressional leaders Monday, the FBI Agents Association and the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association said they were reaching out to raise “urgent concerns” about moves from acting Justice Department officials that “threaten the careers of thousands of FBI Special Agents and risk disrupting the Bureau’s essential work.”
Last week the acting deputy attorney general told the acting head of the FBI to fire the agency’s entire senior leadership team and the assistant director in charge of the Washington Field Office, according to the letter.
The FBI was also ordered to put together a list of agency officials who worked on the investigation tied to the 2021 Capitol attack, a catalog that would be used to figure out if those members should face “personnel actions.”
“Special Agents who risk their lives protecting this country from criminals and terrorists are now being placed on lists and having their careers jeopardized for carrying out the orders they were given by their superiors in the FBI,” the letter warned.
“These actions, which lack transparency and due process, are creating dangerous distractions, imperiling ongoing investigations, and undermining the Bureau’s ability to work with state, local, and international partners to make America safe again,” the letter added.
In a memorandum sent Friday to the acting head of the FBI, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove directed seven FBI employees to be terminated by Feb. 3, if they had not retired beforehand. A copy of the memorandum was released Tuesday by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.
On the list of seven names was Robert Wells, who last year was named as executive assistant director of the National Security Branch at FBI headquarters, and Michael Nordwall, who was named executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch at FBI headquarters last year.
Their status with the agency was unclear as of Tuesday afternoon.
“These are people who have served our country, protected Americans, and put criminals behind bars. Now they have been pushed out simply for doing their jobs,” Warner said on social media.
Bove also ordered the acting head of the FBI to identify all FBI personnel “assigned at any time” to investigations or prosecutions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. For employees on the list, the agency should provide their title, assigned office and their role in the investigation or prosecution, according to the memorandum.
Meanwhile, a group of unnamed FBI employees on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in federal court after they were asked to fill out a survey that would identify their specific role in matters regarding the Capitol attack or Trump’s handling of classified material.
The group says the purpose for the list is to identify employees to be terminated or “to suffer other adverse employment action.”
“Plaintiffs reasonably fear that all or parts of this list might be published by allies of President Trump, thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of retribution by the now pardoned and at-large Jan. 6 convicted felons,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit seeks to prohibit the aggregation and storage of any list that would “identify FBI agents and other personnel, and tie them directly to Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago case activities.”
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