"That would be disqualifying": Legal experts alarmed at Trump AG pick's plans for "revenge"

President-elect Donald Trump nominated former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead the Justice Department last Thursday as he wound down his whirlwind of Cabinet announcements ahead of his second term. 

While former federal prosecutors noted that Bondi, who was Trump's former defense lawyer, is a seasoned litigator and thus more qualified to be attorney general than former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew from consideration for the role last week, some told Salon that that upside also makes Bondi's nomination as a fierce Trump loyalist all the more cause for concern.

"My first instinct is,' Well here's someone who is at least qualified,'" Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, told Salon in a phone interview. "She's had a few problems of her own, but she has decades of criminal law experience. She was a Florida A.G., so she can certainly, certainly be the Attorney General of the United States, whereas Matt Gaetz should not be anywhere even near the Department of Justice."

Bondi's nomination came just hours after Gaetz's withdrawal amid a firestorm that spawned from resurfaced claims he paid to have sex with a 17-year-old girl. Gaetz has denied the allegations, and the release of a report on the House Ethics Committee's investigation into the matter was blocked last week. 

Bondi previously served as Florida attorney general from 2011 to 2019 and is currently a partner at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, chairing its corporate regulatory compliance practice. Still, legal experts had mixed reactions to the Trump pick, citing her allegiance to the president-elect and her comparatively minor controversies.

"Although Bondi has a much stronger record as a lawyer than Gaetz, including her experience as a prosecutor, that likely means she may be more effective in implementing Trump’s promised goal of turning the DOJ on his political enemies," argued Temidayo Aganga-Williams, a partner at Selendy Gay PLLC in New York and former assistant U.S. attorney.

Trump’s selection of Bondi confirms "that the next Trump DOJ will be bound to the president instead of being bound to the rule of law," he added in an email.

Bondi has spent the last decade vehemently defending Trump, lambasting the officials who have investigated him and repeating his stolen election claims. As she awaits confirmation from the Senate, whether she will follow through on promises she made in media appearances to probe federal prosecutors and FBI agents she deemed out-of-line has come into focus, NBC News reports. 

“The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones,” Bondi said last year in an interview on Fox News following Trump's indictment in Georgia for allegedly plotting to overturn the state's 2020 election outcome. “The investigators will be investigated.”

She went on to dub the prosecutors who filed charges against the president-elect in his criminal cases members of the "deep state" — a reference to a false theory that DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents schemed to undermine Trump. Without citing evidence, the former Florida prosecutor declared that since they now had a "spotlight on them they can all be investigated."

Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former federal prosecutor, told Salon that, while Bondi's political ideology and support of Trump aren't disqualifiers, her comments are "very troubling" and "reckless" given that there is no evidence of any misconduct in the Trump prosecution.

"Calling out for criminal prosecution of people who have simply been doing their job, I think, is a distortion of the facts and a violation of law, and it has given me great pause," she said in a phone interview, noting that she hopes to see rigorous questioning from the Senate on what Bondi meant in those statements.

"If indeed she simply wants to use the Justice Department as a tool of revenge for Donald Trump, I think that would be disqualifying," McQuade added.

Aganga-Williams voiced a similar concern, calling the comments "incredibly dangerous" and arguing that they turn public servants into the "unfair target of the very government they've served."

But Rahmani indicated he was skeptical of Bondi's ability to follow through on her comments or execute Trump's push to investigate those who have investigated him. What Bondi could feasibly charge the prosecutors who indicted Trump with is unclear, he said. 

"Whether it's Gaetz or Bondi or whomever, what can Jack Smith and others really be prosecuted for? There's not an easy answer," he said, noting prosecutors' immunity from civil lawsuits and the lack of any evidence of a civil rights violation they could be charged with.

"There's no clear charge that she could use to go after folks," Rahmani said, adding: "I don't think judges, even Trump-appointed judges, would put up with that. I think those cases would be dismissed pretty quickly."

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Trump intends to fire special counsel Jack Smith and the team of prosecutors that helped him indict Trump on charges of illegally retaining national security documents and attempting to subvert the 2020 election results. Smith moved to dismiss the case and appeal against Trump on Monday.

While Rahmani speculated that Smith and his team are likely worried, he also questioned whether Trump will actually stay true to his word.

"Trump has made all sorts of promises. He's delivered on some. He hasn't on others," Rahmani said. "You never know with him. He's a little bit of an enigma when it comes to these types of things, but if he's gonna go through on that promise, Pam Bondi is going to be the one that's executing it."

Also of concern for McQuade and Aganga-Williams was Bondi's boosting of Trump's election fraud claims. The former district attorney traveled to Philadelphia and held news conferences where she amplified false allegations of widespread ballot fraud and insisted the election had been stolen, according to NBC News.

“We know that ballots have been dumped,” Bondi said. “We’ve heard that people were receiving ballots that were dead, the thing that is happening all over the country.”

The former state attorney general later acted as a defense lawyer for Trump during his first impeachment proceedings, claiming the 2019 probe was a "sham" and that he was unfairly investigated. She also made an appearance at Trump's criminal trial in Manhattan last spring over charges of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment made to an adult film actress ahead of the 2016 presidential contest. 

"I think the Senate needs to satisfy themselves [as to] what her view of that was because simply pushing an agenda designed to undermine public confidence in the electoral system is a danger to democracy and not something we would expect by an attorney general whose job it is to uphold the rule of law," McQuade said.

Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr dismissed Trump's claims of election fraud and declined to launch DOJ investigations into them over a lack of evidence. The then-president then attempted to appoint Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ official who backed his 2020 claims, as acting attorney general, but the effort was thwarted when a half dozen senior Justice Department officials threatened to resign. 

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McQuade also raised ethics concerns around Bondi's potential confirmation, encouraging the Senate to "carefully" probe her handling of a $25,000 political donation she received from Trump in 2013.  

Bondi and then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who had also received a donation from Trump, had both declined to join a lawsuit in 2016 accusing Trump University, a company that wasn't an accredited college or university but offered real estate training courses, of tax fraud.

Bondi's office had received 22 complaints of fraud against the company — only one of which she said later her office considered credible — and she opted not to pursue a case. A spokesperson for Bondi later confirmed she had solicited Trump's donation.

Later that year, the Internal Revenue Service found Trump's gift to Bondi violated tax laws in response to a complaint from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Trump paid a $2,500 fine, while a Florida ethics panel later cleared Bondi of wrongdoing. 

“I will not let any money from anyone affect what I do,” Bondi said, per the Washington Post, at a 2016 news conference in defense of her handling of the situation.

Though the donation was a violation, it shouldn't necessarily be disqualifying for Bondi, argued Rahmani, who previously served as the director of enforcement for the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.

McQuade added, however, that the Florida ethics panel's decision, while valuable, also may not rise to the same rigor and standard of probing as seen at the federal level. She also said she hopes Trump follows through in having his nominees, including Bondi, undergo FBI background checks to ensure they're all fit to serve.

Still, Trump's spate of nominees makes clear that the president-elect is demanding loyalty from them — Bondi included, Aganga-Williams and Rahmani both argued. Rahmani added that he hopes her "experience carries the day," though he said he doesn't expect Bondi will stand up to Trump as Barr did. 

While McQuade said she worries that, if confirmed, Bondi would be interested in carrying out Trump's calls for "revenge against his political rivals," she's also hopeful that Bondi's past comments amount to "political rhetoric and not an actual plan."

"I'm also hopeful that there are enough guardrails in the system to prevent that" like career prosecutors balking at efforts to charge anyone who hasn't committed a crime, the grand jury and trial systems, and judges, she added.

Aganga-Williams, however, said he expects Bondi's execution of the attorney general role, should she be confirmed, to be "exactly what Trump wants it to be and not what the rule of law demands it to be."

"She has shown her willingness to support Trump’s lies, including by supporting his false claims about fraud in the 2020 election," he added. "Someone who is willing to lie on behalf of a candidate will only be more dangerous when doing so on behalf of a president."

Bondi did not respond to an emailed request for comment.