Pam Bondi confirmed as attorney general

WASHINGTON – The Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as attorney general on Tuesday evening, putting in place a steadfast loyalist to President Donald Trump to oversee a Justice Department he has bitterly denounced.

Bondi, 59, was confirmed by a vote of 54-46, with one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, joining the Republican majority.

A former prosecutor in Florida, Bondi has acted as a high-profile surrogate for Trump. She cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election, criticized prosecutors in other jurisdictions who charged Trump with crimes and defended him at his first impeachment, over whether he had improperly withheld military aid to Ukraine.

She takes the reins as the president has tossed vague accusations of criminal wrongdoing at his political rivals, and out-of-power Democrats warn that as attorney general, she may enable abuses of power.

Trump had made plain his intent to install an ally as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, vowing to eliminate what he calls his “deep state” rivals. The pledge has raised the possibility that he would seek to end a long-standing practice of Justice Department criminal investigations operating independent of White House direction.

The department has begun making sweeping personnel changes in the career ranks – reassigning or dismissing scores of prosecutors, including those involved in the investigations Trump.

Hours before the vote, FBI officials turned over a lengthy list of information about agents who had worked on Jan. 6, 2021, riot investigations – a list that has provoked fears that it could be used to punish or fire hundreds of agents. Some agents filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to stop the Justice Department from publicizing the names of the agents.

On the Senate floor beforehand, Adam Schiff, D-Calif., warned that the “campaign of retribution” Trump had long promised was underway.

“Top FBI agents have been fired,” he continued. “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.”

The country “cannot afford,” Schiff said, an attorney general who believes their role is to defend Trump rather than the American people.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., called Bondi “supremely qualified for this job,” and the right person to take over “a Justice Department gone astray.”

In his first term, Trump had troubled relationships with his two attorneys general – both of whom he forced out of their jobs after they displeased him by not meeting his demands.

Bondi was the president’s second choice to run the department. Trump’s first choice, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration as lawmakers pressed for more details about a sex scandal involving a 17-year-old girl.

At Bondi’s confirmation hearing, Republicans urged her to drastically overhaul the department and punish any employees who exhibited what they described as bias against conservatives. Democrats, in turn, questioned whether she would bow to Trump’s stated desire to seek vengeance.

Bondi refused to say explicitly how she would handle such pressure from Trump, but insisted that “politics will not play a part” in her investigative or prosecutorial decisions.

At the hearing, which took place before Trump was sworn into office, Bondi also downplayed the suggestion by Democrats that the president would issue pardons to all of those convicted or charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

“I’m not going to speak for the president, but the president does not like people who abuse police officers either,” she said. Days later, Trump pardoned or granted clemency to everyone charged in that melee – nearly 1,600 people, including those who assaulted police.

She echoed Republican grievances, criticizing how the department had been run during the Biden administration, saying it “has been weaponized for years and years and years, and it has to stop.”

Pressed about a past vow that “the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Bondi doubled down, replying, “None of us are above the law.”

In 2010, Bondi emerged from a crowded Republican primary to win the Florida attorney general’s race. Over her eight years in the job, Bondi became a national figure in the battle against opioid addiction. Since her nomination, she has focused on that part of her resume and her prosecutions of violent criminals as her chief credentials for the job.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.