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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as U.S. attorney general Tuesday evening, putting a longtime ally of Donald Trump at the helm of a Justice Department that has already been rattled by the firings of career employees seen as disloyal to the Republican president.
The vote fell almost entirely along party lines, with only Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, joining with all Republicans to pass her confirmation 54-46.
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and corporate lobbyist, is expected to oversee a radical reshaping of the department that has been the target of Trump’s ire over the criminal cases it brought against him. She enters with the FBI, which she will oversee, in turmoil over the scrutiny of agents involved in investigations related to the president, who has made clear his desire to seek revenge on his perceived adversaries.
Republicans have praised Bondi as a highly qualified leader they contend will bring much-needed change to a department they believe unfairly pursued Trump through investigations resulting in two indictments.
“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,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
But Bondi has faced intense scrutiny over her close relationship with the president, who during his term fired an FBI director who refused to pledge loyalty to him and forced out an attorney general who recused himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign.
While Bondi has sought to reassure Democrats that politics would play no part in her decision-making, she also refused at her confirmation hearing last month to rule potential investigations into Trump’s adversaries. And she has repeated Trump’s claims that the prosecutions against him amounted to political 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 as “accomplished and competent” but said his “grave concern is really about President Trump and what he is clearly demanding.”
“That clearly is a loyalty oath to him as opposed to a demand for straightforward, candid advice, including if the president is asking for something to be done like the prosecution of a political adversary,” Welch said.
Bondi’s confirmation vote came just hours after FBI agents sued the Justice Department over efforts to develop a list of employees involved in the Jan. 6 prosecutions, which agents fear could be a precursor to mass firings.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove last week ordered the acting FBI director to provide the names, titles and offices of all FBI employees who worked on the Jan. 6 cases — which Trump has described as a “grave national injustice.” Bove, who defended Trump in his criminal cases before joining the administration, said Justice Department officials would carry out a “review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”
Justice Department officials have also recently forced out senior FBI executives, fired prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team who investigated Trump and terminated a group of prosecutors in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office who were hired to help with the massive Jan. 6 investigation.
Bondi repeatedly stressed at her confirmation hearing that she would not pursue anyone for political reasons, and vowed that the public, not the president, would be her client. But her answers at times echoed Trump’s campaign rhetoric about a politicized justice system.
“They targeted Donald Trump,” Bondi told lawmakers. “They went after him — actually starting back in 2016, they targeted his campaign. They have launched countless investigations against him.” She added, “If I am attorney general, I will not politicize that office.”
Trump nominated Bondi for attorney general after it became clear that his initial pick, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, could not win enough support from Republican senators to be confirmed.
Bondi has been a fixture in Trump’s orbit for years, and a regular defender of the president-elect on news programs amid his legal woes. In a 2023 Fox News appearance, she suggested that “bad” Justice Department prosecutors would be investigated under the Trump administration.
“The investigators will be investigated,” she said.
Smith has said politics played no part in his decisions and the evidence his team gathered was sufficient for Trump to have been convicted at trial on charges of scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Smith dropped that case and a separate one charging Trump with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after Trump’s election win in November, citing longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting criminal cases against a sitting president.
Alanna Durkin Richer And Stephen Groves, The Associated Press