Senate confirms Pam Bondi as US attorney general, putting Trump ally at Justice Department’s helm

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and STEPHEN GROVES

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed Pam Bondi arsenic U.S. lawyer wide Tuesday evening, putting a longtime state of Donald Trump astatine the helm of a Justice Department that has already been rattled by the firings of vocation employees seen arsenic disloyal to the Republican president.

The ballot fell astir wholly on enactment lines, with lone Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, joining with each Republicans to walk her confirmation 54-46.

Bondi, a erstwhile Florida lawyer general and firm lobbyist, is expected to oversee a extremist reshaping of the section that has been the people of Trump’s ire implicit the criminal cases it brought against him. She enters with the FBI, which she volition oversee, in turmoil implicit the scrutiny of agents involved successful investigations related to the president, who has made wide his tendency to question revenge connected his perceived adversaries.

Republicans person praised Bondi arsenic a highly qualified person they contend volition bring much-needed alteration to a section they judge unfairly pursued Trump done investigations resulting successful 2 indictments.

“Pam Bondi has promised to get the section backmost to its halfway mission: prosecuting transgression and protecting Americans from threats to their information and their freedoms,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

But Bondi has faced aggravated scrutiny implicit her adjacent narration with the president, who during his term fired an FBI director who refused to pledge loyalty to him and forced retired an lawyer wide who recused himself from the Justice Department’s probe into imaginable ties betwixt Russia and his 2016 statesmanlike campaign.

While Bondi has sought to reassure Democrats that authorities would play nary portion successful her decision-making, she also refused astatine her confirmation proceeding past period to regularisation imaginable investigations into Trump’s adversaries. And she has repeated Trump’s claims that the prosecutions against him amounted to governmental persecution, saying the Justice Department “had been weaponized for years and years and years, and it’s got to stop.”

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., praised Bondi arsenic “accomplished and competent” but said his “grave interest is truly astir President Trump and what helium is intelligibly demanding.”

“That intelligibly is simply a loyalty oath to him arsenic opposed to a request for straightforward, candid advice, including if the president is asking for thing to beryllium done similar the prosecution of a governmental adversary,” Welch said.

Bondi’s confirmation ballot came conscionable hours aft FBI agents sued the Justice Department implicit efforts to develop a database of employees involved successful the Jan. 6 prosecutions, which agents fearfulness could beryllium a precursor to wide firings.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove past week ordered the acting FBI manager to supply the names, titles and offices of each FBI employees who worked connected the Jan. 6 cases — which Trump has described arsenic a “grave nationalist injustice.” Bove, who defended Trump successful his transgression cases earlier joining the administration, said Justice Department officials would transportation retired a “review process to find whether immoderate further unit actions are necessary.”

Justice Department officials person besides precocious forced retired elder FBI executives, fired prosecutors connected peculiar counsel Jack Smith’s squad who investigated Trump and terminated a radical of prosecutors successful the D.C. U.S. attorney’s bureau who were hired to assistance with the monolithic Jan. 6 investigation.

Bondi repeatedly stressed astatine her confirmation proceeding that she would not prosecute anyone for governmental reasons, and vowed that the public, not the president, would beryllium her client. But her answers astatine times echoed Trump’s run rhetoric astir a politicized justness system.

“They targeted Donald Trump,” Bondi told lawmakers. “They went aft him — really starting backmost successful 2016, they targeted his campaign. They person launched countless investigations against him.” She added, “If I americium lawyer general, I volition not politicize that office.”

Trump nominated Bondi for lawyer wide aft it became wide that his archetypal pick, erstwhile Rep. Matt Gaetz, could not triumph capable enactment from Republican senators to beryllium confirmed.

Bondi has been a fixture successful Trump’s orbit for years, and a regular defender of the president-elect connected quality programs amid his ineligible woes. In a 2023 Fox News appearance, she suggested that “bad” Justice Department prosecutors would beryllium investigated nether the Trump administration.

“The investigators volition beryllium investigated,” she said.

Smith has said authorities played nary portion successful his decisions and the grounds his squad gathered was capable for Trump to person been convicted astatine proceedings connected charges of scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 statesmanlike election.

Smith dropped that case and a abstracted 1 charging Trump with illegally hoarding classified documents astatine his Mar-a-Lago property successful Palm Beach, Florida, aft Trump’s predetermination triumph successful November, citing longstanding Justice Department argumentation prohibiting transgression cases against a sitting president.