In the end, Republican senators were not forced to choose between their dignity and the president-elect’s wrath: With former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., withdrawing from consideration to serve as Donald Trump’s next attorney general, there is no longer a need to defend a man investigated for sex trafficking — no need to tell constituents that he didn’t know the woman he allegedly paid for sex was only 17 — or risk a late-night Truth Social rant from a 78-year-old.
Why Gaetz dropped out is as much of a mystery as why he was nominated in the first place. Sure, the headlines about having sex with a minor weren’t great, but it was old news. The Florida Republican and his allies could argue that it had all been looked into by the Department of Justice and no charges were ever filed. A House ethics report could and may still shed more light, but it likely wouldn’t alter the already known gist: that Gaetz was not the sort of middle-aged man you would like hanging around any teenage girls.
Hours after he announced his sudden exit from the race, and a day after Vice President-elect JD Vance made the rounds urging senators to give Gaetz a chance, Trump had already moved on to a Florida woman: Pam Bondi, a loyalist who served as the Sunshine State’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019, during which time she also served as a fill-in host for Fox News. After leaving office, she defended Trump during his first impeachment trial for attempting to extort Ukraine, going all-in on the debunked claim that President Joe Biden had a prosecutor there fired because they were doing too much to address corruption (the opposite was in fact the case).
Unlike Gaetz, Bondi at least has a good deal of experience actually practicing the law and overseeing a large office; she has also not been accused of sexual misconduct. That’s also why some who criticized the Gaetz pick aren’t celebrating his replacement.
“Bondi looks more ‘normal’ on the surface, and she has the kind of experience you look for for a position like this,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance commented on her website. That’s also, in Vance’s opinion, what makes her more dangerous: Gaetz may have been willing to abuse the Department of Justice on Trump’s behalf, but he would have been coming in with no experience and a reputation already in tatters. Bondi, say what you will, has actually prosecuted a case before.
She has also demonstrated a willingness to do as Trump asks. Since leaving public office, she has been busy as the head of the America First Policy Institute, building off her 2020 election denial — “We’ve won Pennsylvania,” Bondi asserted four years ago, when she claimed “fake ballots” were being counted in a state Trump lost by more than 80,000 votes — to argue in court, earlier this year, that election results should be thrown out in Democratic-leaning counties if a single (MAGA) election official says there might be fraud.
Earlier, as Florida’s attorney general, Bondi declined to join a lawsuit regarding fraud at Trump University, claiming that she had received few complaints; an Associated Press investigation found that there had in fact been scores. The decision to sit out the litigation against Trump — litigation that resulted in a $25 million settlement — came only after Bondi received an illegal $25,000 campaign contribution from a Trump-affiliated charity; Trump would go on to name Bondi’s chief of staff to a top position in the Department of Education in his first term.
As Vance puts it, that’s all a sign not of a true believer, per se, but a cynic willing to do whatever it takes to stand out at Mar-a-Lago.
“She accepted Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election even though her experience suggests she knows it wasn’t true,” Vance wrote. “What happens when Trump asks her to engage in revenge prosecutions? Will she have the grit to say no? As someone who doesn’t come from DOJ, will she understand the importance of independence, or might she permit Trump to have direct contact and influence over criminal cases?”
It is safe to assume that the president-elect is looking for the same thing in Bondi as he saw in Gaetz: a loyalist who won’t balk at ordering dubious investigations and also won’t appoint any meddlesome special counsels should the president himself be accused of wrongdoing. And for anyone still hoping right-wing populism manifests itself as meaningful action against financial “elites,” The American Prospect’s David Dayen notes that Bondi squashed efforts to investigate foreclosure fraud following the 2009 financial collapse.
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans,” Trump posted on Truth Social, announcing his selection of Bondi. “Not anymore.”
As with anything Trump, it is also safe to assume some level of projection (America under Biden, he said on the campaign trail, is a “fascist state”). The billionaire Republican campaigned on “retribution” and, until shown otherwise, the public and the press should assume that remains his intent.
Speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention, Bondi, while serving as Florida’s top law enforcement officer, joined the crowd in calling for the Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to be put behind bars. “‘Lock her up,’ I love that,” she said.
More recently on Fox News, Bondi reiterated her support for politicized justice, declaring that those who dared investigate Trump would themselves be targeted.
“The Department of Justice, the prosecutors, will be prosecuted — the bad ones,” she promised in the August 2023 appearance. “The investigators will be investigated, because the deep state last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows. But now they have a spotlight on them and they can all be investigated.”
It’s enough, certainly, to sour any celebration over Gaetz’s departure, even if that exist did underscore that there are still limits on Trump’s whims.
“She is a dangerous and effective pick,” Jason Johnson, a political scientist at Morgan State University, said on MSNBC. “And that’s, frankly, worse than what we would have got with Matt Gaetz.”
