President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, was confirmed by the Senate Tuesday evening, 54-46.
Bondi, a staunch Trump loyalist, will now assume the role of top federal prosecutor. She is poised to be a key figure in efforts to transform the Department of Justice, which the president has said he intends to use to go after his political adversaries.
As Bondi awaited Senate confirmation, the new Trump administration, under acting attorney general James McHenry, has already launched its broad effort to root out those deemed disloyal from the Department of Justice. Prosecutors involved in cases tied to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, and the investigation into Trump’s role in spurring the riots, have been terminated.
“When confirmed, Ms. Bondi will take the helm [at] what we all know is a turbulent time and also a Justice Department infected with political decision-making and its leaders refusing to acknowledge that reality,” said Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on the Senate floor ahead of the vote.
The former Florida attorney general previously served as a lawyer to the President during his first impeachment trial and assisted the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. Democrats had seemingly accepted her confirmation as an inevitability when they instead used her hearing to probe Bondi on her response to comments made by another Trump acolyte who could likely be her subordinate: FBI director nominee Kash Patel.
In her confirmation hearing, Bondi declined to commit to enforcing the TikTok ban, offered a non-answer to whether former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election and did not provide a clear answer when asked if she would investigate Jack Smith, the special counsel charged with investigating Trump in the four years he was out of office. Trump has previously called for Smith to be prosecuted.
