Asshole of the Month: Pam Bondi
In our system of government, the most powerful officials—after the President —are supposedly those in line to succeed POTUS: the Vice President, then Speaker of the House, President Pro Tempore of the Senate…and eventually you get to the U.S. Attorney General, coming in at seventh place. But the AG is arguably the second most powerful position in government, considering that the VP’s job mainly involves aping the President’s every word and behaving like a devoted lickspittle.
The attorney general, on the other hand, rules over the whole Department of Justice and has wide discretion over which laws to enforce or ignore, which crimes to investigate and which to treat with kid gloves. Everything from environmental laws to campaign finance and consumer protection laws, civil rights, antitrust legislation, utilities regulation and so much more falls under the purview of the attorney general. In recent years, with political polarization at an all-time high, the AG has also acted, unofficially, as the President’s attorney, cover-up artist and attack dog.
Pam Bondi apprenticed for her current job as Trump’s pit bull with an eight-year, scandal-filled reign as Florida’s state AG from 2011 to 2019, coinciding with the Orange Führer’s rise to power. On September 14, 2013, an Orlando Sentinel story broke noting that Eric Schneiderman, who filed a $40-million fraud case against Trump University, had cited at least 22 complaints filed with the Florida attorney general’s office in 2008, two years before Bondi’s election. As a result, a spokesperson for Bondi’s office announced that her office was reviewing the lawsuit. Then, only three days later, And Justice for All, a PAC established to support Bondi’s reelection as Florida AG, received a $25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. And suddenly she reversed course, declining to join the New York suit. Critics have called this a “pay to play scheme”; Bondi took the payment and ditched the lawsuit, leaving her exploited constituents out in the cold.
