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Pam Bondi has been confirmed to serve as President Donald Trump’s attorney general.
The 59-year-old was a prosecutor in Florida before becoming the state’s top law enforcement official.
She’s now set to lead the president’s efforts to reshape the Department of Justice. Bondi has served as a top surrogate for Trump and his efforts to refute the results of the 2020 election. She has criticized other prosecutors for charging the president with a variety of offenses. Bondi also defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, which came following allegations that he had withheld military aid to Ukraine as he urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former President Joe Biden.
Bondi will now take charge of the Justice Department at a time when the president has been alleging that his political rivals are guilty of crimes worthy of criminal prosecution as Democrats argue that she may enable Trump’s possible abuses of power.
Even before her confirmation, the Justice Department began changing its personnel, reassigning or firing large numbers of prosecutors, such as those who worked on Trump investigations.
With hours left to go before the Senate vote to confirm Bondi, FBI officials handed over a long list covering information regarding agents who had worked on investigations into the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. There are concerns that such a list could be used as guidance for retribution or firings. Agents filed a lawsuit Tuesday looking to prevent the Department of Justice from publishing agents’ names.
California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff said on the Senate floor that Trump’s “campaign of retribution is happening.”
“Top FBI agents have been fired,” he added, according to The New York Times. “Would she have defended these FBI agents at the risk of her own job, as one senior FBI leader has done? Of course not, and let us not pretend otherwise.”
Schiff argued that the country “cannot afford” to have an attorney general more concerned with defending Trump rather than the American people.
More follows…
