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Pam Bondi, Donald Trump’s new pick to lead the US justice department, was the first female attorney general of Florida but is perhaps best known in recent years as a loyalist to the former president.Trump announced Bondi as his nominee for US attorney general on Thursday hours after Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first pick, bowed out of consideration amid growing Republican opposition following sexual misconduct allegations against him.“I am proud to announce former Attorney General of the Great State of Florida, Pam Bondi, as our next Attorney General of the United States. Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.Bondi has been a chair at the America First Policy Institute, a thinktank set up by former Trump administration staffers, and served on Trump’s first transition team.The 59-year-old has been a longtime Trump ally – she was considered during his first term as a potential candidate for the nation’s highest law enforcement role.Trump was told by advisers that she was a good alternative to Gaetz because she has allies across the Republican party as well as inside Trump’s world, according to people familiar with the matter, the Guardian reported Thursday.Before she became involved in national politics, Bondi spent more than 18 years as a prosecutor in the Hillsborough county state attorney’s office. She was a political unknown when she was elected as Florida’s first female attorney general in 2010 and had received an endorsement from the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.View image in fullscreenShe served as Florida’s top prosecutor from 2011 to 2019, and later as a lobbyist for US and international clients.Bondi’s tenure as attorney general also coincided with two of the most high-profile and deadly shootings the nation has seen. In 2016, after 47 people were shot and killed and more than 50 were injured in an extremist attack on an LGBTQIA+ nightclub in Orlando, Bondi was called out on-air by CNN’s Anderson Cooper over her support for a ban on same-sex marriage in the state.Two years later, 17 students and staff were shot and killed by a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school. Bondi called for the death penalty for the shooter and supported then governor Rick Scott in the passage of the state’s first gun-restriction legislation, which raised the minimum age for someone to buy a gun from 18 to 21. It also appropriates millions of dollars for expanded mental health resources in schools, to build a replacement for Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school and for heightened campus security.Bondi’s ties to Trump go back years. While serving as Florida’s attorney general, she backed Trump in 2016 over a candidate from her home state, Marco Rubio.In 2016, the Associated Press revealed that Bondi had personally asked Trump for a donation to her campaign three years earlier. The funds came through a Trump family foundation, which is in violation of policies around charities engaging in politics. The $25,000 donation also came as Bondi’s office was considering joining New York in an investigation of Trump’s universities, over allegations of fraud and false promises about what training and job prospects for students would look like. Once the check arrived, Bondi declined to participate in the investigation, according to the Associated Press.Bondi did try to send the check back, the Florida Times-Union reported, but it was rejected and returned by Trump.Bondi was then one of Trump’s attorneys during his 2019 impeachment proceedings, when he was accused – but not convicted – of trying to make military assistance to Ukraine dependent on that country’s willingness to investigate Joe Biden. And during Trump’s hush-money trial, Bondi was one of a handful of Republicans to show up to court to support him.Bondi has harshly criticized the criminal cases against Trump as well as Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Trump in two federal cases. She described Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump as “horrible” people “weaponizing our legal system”.If she is confirmed, Bondi will join several other members of Trump’s legal team in the justice department.The Associated Press contributed to this report More
Donald Trump announced that he would nominate for attorney general Pam Bondi, the former Florida state attorney general, hours after the former representative Matt Gaetz withdrew in the face of opposition from Senate Republicans who had balked over a series of sexual misconduct allegations.The move to name Bondi reflected Trump’s determination to install a loyalist as the nation’s top law enforcement official and marked another instance of Trump putting his personal lawyers in the justice department.Trump almost immediately settled on Bondi as a replacement pick for Gaetz, according to people familiar with the matter. Bondi had not auditioned for the role and her loyalist credentials coupled with her willingness to defend Trump on television made her an attractive pick.View image in fullscreenThe fact that Bondi could count on broad support inside Trump’s world and the Senate Republican conference, in contrast with Gaetz who always faced an uphill struggle, also earned her the endorsement from most of Trump’s senior advisers on Thursday, the people said.“I am proud to announce former Attorney General of the Great State of Florida, Pam Bondi, as our next Attorney General of the United States. Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.“Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again. I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!”Should Bondi be confirmed by the Senate in the coming months, it would be a reward for years of her loyalty to Trump which started during the 2016 campaign, when she became an outspoken but fierce defender of his candidacy.She also helped with Trump’s legal defense during his first impeachment trial, parroted claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and continued working as a surrogate through the 2024 campaign when she attended Trump’s criminal trial in New York.Bondi’s elevation to lead the justice department would also come as a result of extraordinary serendipity, after Trump picked Gaetz almost on a whim after he decided against more conventional lawyersThe selection process for major positions has involved Trump pulling up each candidate on a bank of screens at his Mar-a-Lago club and looking for various qualities, including on their perceived loyalty and how they might play on television.Trump did not like the initial list of names that included Mark Paoletta, the former counsel at the White House office of management and budget; Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey; and Robert Guiffra, co-chair of the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, and decided he preferred a pugilist like Gaetz.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the Gaetz nomination sank after a series of meetings on Wednesday with Republican senators. Later that evening, they broadly expressed to the Trump team their continued opposition to the Gaetz nomination, the people said.On Thursday morning, Trump called Gaetz and told him that it was clear he did not have the votes in a rare moment of realpolitik for Trump. Gaetz agreed and took himself out of the running, one of the people said.Gaetz told associates after he announced he was withdrawing his nomination that he faced the reality that at least three senators – Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski – and senator-elect John Curtis, would vote against him and block his confirmation, the people said.From his Mar-a-Lago club, Trump said in a statement: “I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be attorney general. He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the administration, for which he has much respect.” More
Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman, withdrew from consideration to serve as Donald Trump’s attorney general on Thursday, amid intense scrutiny of allegations of sexual misconduct, ending the brief nomination of one of Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks.After meeting with senators on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Gaetz determined that his nomination was “becoming a distraction to the critical work” of the new Trump administration, he explained on X.“There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s [justice department] must be in place and ready on Day 1,” Gaetz said.“I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America.”A source familiar with Gaetz’s nomination process told the Guardian that privately confirmed opposition from four senators – enough to sink the nomination if no Democrats defected – was what pushed Gaetz to decide to withdraw.The announcement comes a little more than a week after Trump said he was nominating Gaetz to be attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.A staunch Trump ally disliked by some fellow Republicans in Congress, Gaetz always faced an uphill battle to be confirmed. He came under intense scrutiny last week over allegations he had sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl.The justice department declined to charge Gaetz last year as part of a sex-trafficking investigation. But details of his encounter and relationships were beginning to seep out. Just before he announced he was withdrawing his nomination, CNN reported that the woman he is alleged to have had sex with when she was 17 told the House ethics committee there had been a second sexual encounter with Gaetz.ABC News and the New York Times reported earlier this week on records of Venmo transactions connecting Gaetz to women who said that he paid them for sex.Gaetz’s announcement comes one day after the House ethics committee deadlocked over releasing its report on the allegations. At least one House Democrat on the committee, Representative Sean Casten of Illinois, said on Thursday he would continue to push for the full release of the Gaetz report.In a post on Truth Social, Trump, who had reportedly been calling senators to lobby for Gaetz’s confirmation, said that “Matt has a wonderful future”.“I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be Attorney General,” he wrote. “He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect. Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!”A staunch Trump ally known for theatrics such as wearing a gas mask on the House floor, Gaetz resigned from Congress the day Trump announced his nomination. It is unclear who Trump will now pick to lead the justice department, which the president-elect has pledged to use to prosecute his enemies.Gaetz’s withdrawal comes as Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, faces accusations of sexual assault. A police report made public this week contains allegations from a woman regarding a 2017 encounter with Hegseth in which she says he took her phone, blocked her from leaving his hotel room and sexually assaulted her. Hegseth has denied the allegations.“Matt Gaetz was a ridiculous, horrible and dangerous AG selection. That Republican senators were not willing to rubber-stamp his nomination is a hopeful sign that a modicum of sanity persists in Washington,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a watchdog group, in a statement. “But Gaetz was not the only Trump nomination threatening America and there’s every reason to worry about who Trump will appoint in Gaetz’s stead.”Additional reporting from Martin Pengelly More
Donald Trump decided to nominate Matt Gaetz as attorney general last Wednesday, during a flight home from Washington, where the president-elect had visited Joe Biden at the White House. The pick proved as surprising as it was controversial. Just eight days later, after a week of relentless hullabaloo, Gaetz withdrew from contention.It was a Washington farce for the ages. But how did it happen?Gaetz, now 42, made his name as a far-right Florida congressman, a pro-Trump publicity hound and gadfly who in October 2023 made history by bringing down a House speaker: Kevin McCarthy, the first ever ejected by his own party.The seeds of Gaetz’s own downfall were to be found in that extraordinary episode.Ostensibly, Gaetz moved against McCarthy in order to install a speaker more amenable to rightwing threats to shut down the federal government over arguments about funding, and less likely to seek Democrats’ help in avoiding such outcomes.But McCarthy never believed that. He insisted Gaetz moved against him in order to block release of a House ethics committee report into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other offenses.Gaetz vehemently denied – and still denies – wrongdoing but, nonetheless, when Trump nominated him for attorney general, he promptly resigned his seat in the House. According to precedent, that blocked release of the ethics report.The report duly became the hottest property in Washington, reporters chasing it, Democrats and some skeptical Republicans eager to find out what it contained. It promised sensational reading.Gaetz was initially investigated by the US justice department, in relation to the actions of Joel Greenberg, a Florida tax collector who in 2021 pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a minor and agreed to cooperate in the investigation of Gaetz.Eventually, the justice department dropped that investigation. But the House ethics committee had been investigating Gaetz too, and in June it outlined the scope of its work: it was investigating claims the congressman “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift”.Trump’s nomination of Gaetz was controversial for other reasons. There was Gaetz’s loud support for Trump supporters convicted in relation to the January 6 attack on Congress, and his promises to seek revenge against Trump’s political opponents. There was his almost complete lack of legal experience and expertise, having graduated from law school but practiced only briefly before entering politics.But in Washington, the ethics committee report remained the holy grail.Details began to leak, ABC News first to report that the committee had obtained records showing Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who testified before the panel, with some of the payments being for sex.A lawyer for two women spoke to the media, saying one had been 17 – under the age of consent – when she was paid for sex with Gaetz.The Trump camp repeatedly pointed to the justice department’s decision to drop its investigation of allegations against Gaetz, without official reason but amid reports of concerns about witness credibility.On Wednesday, the House committee considered whether to release the report. The session ended in deadlock, five Democrats for release, five Republicans against it. In the House at large, Democrats introduced motions calling for a full vote to force the issue.Controversy switched to the Senate. As Democrats said they had asked the FBI for its files on Gaetz, the congressman himself climbed Capitol Hill, in the company of JD Vance, to meet the vice-president-elect’s erstwhile Senate colleagues and seek to convince them that Gaetz should be confirmed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt did not go well. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, relative Republican moderates already used to saying no to Trump, at least some of the time, were not supportive.Gaetz found sympathy from others. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, said he would “urge all of my Senate colleagues, particularly Republicans, not to join the lynch mob and give the process a chance to move forward”. But plenty of other Republicans cast doubt on Gaetz’s chances of being confirmed.John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the judiciary committee, said any hearings for Gaetz would be like “Kavanaugh on steroids” – a reference to the tempestuous hearings in 2018 in which Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second pick for the supreme court, angrily rejected accusations of sexual assault. In Kavanaugh’s case, the Capitol Hill circus proved controversial but survivable.But Gaetz would not be given a chance to pull off a similar escape. On Thursday, on social media, he said: “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as attorney general.”CNN subsequently reported that the woman who says she had sex with him when she was a minor told the ethics committee she had another sexual encounter with Gaetz, which also involved another adult woman.“After being asked for comment for this story,” the CNN report said, “Gaetz announced he was backing out as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee.”However, a source familiar with Gaetz’s nomination process told the Guardian that privately confirmed opposition from four senators – enough to sink the nomination if no Democrats defected – was what pushed Gaetz to decide to withdraw, before the call from CNN.Murkowski and Collins were opposed. So was John Curtis, the senator-elect from Utah who will succeed Mitt Romney, another Trump critic, in the new year. The fourth voice set against Gaetz was an influential one: Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican leader now beginning life back in the rank and file.In his announcement, Gaetz proclaimed his support for “the most successful president in history” and said he would “forever be honored” that Trump nominated him for attorney general.Elsewhere in Washington, it seemed safe to bet, politicians and reporters alike were reflecting on an extraordinary episode of near-unsurpassable Washington dishonor. More
A woman who publicly accused Robert F Kennedy Jr of sexual assault when she worked for him as a babysitter said she was motivated to do so when he released a campaign ad based on a famous advertisement for his uncle, President John F Kennedy.“I literally was just watching the Super Bowl and saw the ad and thought, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’” Eliza Cooney told USA Today.Released when Kennedy was running for president as an independent, the ad attracted criticism from members of the famous Democratic political family. Kennedy Jr apologized – but kept the ad online.Nine months later, after dropping out of the presidential race and backing Donald Trump, Kennedy is Trump’s nominee for US health secretary.A hugely controversial choice given his promotion of vaccine conspiracy theories and other disputed health claims, Kennedy is also one of a number of Trump cabinet picks to be accused of sexual misconduct.Cooney initially told Vanity Fair about how she went to work for Kennedy in 1998, when she was 23 and he was a 45-year-old environmental attorney. Describing a series of unwanted advances, she said Kennedy ultimately “came up behind her … and began groping her, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up along her rib cage and breasts”, before being interrupted by someone walking into the room.When Kennedy was asked about Cooney’s allegations, he told the BreakingPoints podcast he was “not a church boy … I have so many skeletons in my closet”, but refused to comment further.In the USA Today interview published on Wednesday, Cooney said: “I know that there are hard-working people who don’t have skeletons in their closet. And I wish we were electing people with fewer skeletons in their closet.”In July, it was widely reported that Kennedy sent a text to Cooney after the Vanity Fair story was published.He wrote: “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings. I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so.”Cooney told USA Today: “I don’t know if it’s an apology if you say, ‘I don’t remember.’ In the context of all his public appearances, it seemed a little bit – it didn’t match. It was like a throwaway.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUSA Today said it had contacted a lawyer for a Kennedy non-profit and Trump’s transition team for comment.Perhaps busy dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct against Pete Hegseth, the nominee for defense secretary, and Matt Gaetz, then the nominee for attorney general, the Trump transition did not immediately respond. The next day, Gaetz withdrew from consideration for a cabinet post.Cooney said she was not speaking out about Kennedy “to try to stall his nomination or upend the confirmation”, but was “just doing it for the public record”, having first told people of the alleged assault during the #MeToo movement, beginning in 2017, when many women named their sexual abusers.Saying that for a long time she “brushed this off a little bit”, seeing sexual assault as “just the price of doing business”, Cooney added: “It’s remarkable that it’s as prevalent as it is. And I just wonder – have we made any progress? This is like a rewind.” More
Matt Gaetz chosen to run the justice department. Fox hosts in charge of the Pentagon and transportation. Elon Musk as head of layoffs. And Robert F Kennedy Jr and Dr Oz overseeing the nation’s health.Some have likened Donald Trump’s administrative picks to a clown car; others are calling our incoming leadership a kakistocracy, or “government by the worst people”, as Merriam-Webster puts it.The word has been trending online, with a burst in search traffic in recent weeks and a new dedicated subreddit. It’s not the first time Trump has (accidentally) made the term famous; many discovered it in his first term. But even after Gaetz’s departure, the kakistocracy of 2016 looks like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood compared with the president-elect’s new batch of sidekicks.It’s not the first time a president has popularized the term. Trump would be horrified to know he shares this distinction with several of America’s least-discussed presidents, including Rutherford B Hayes, James Garfield and Chester A Arthur. This trio – somehow forgettable despite the fact that the middle one was assassinated – led the US from the late 1870s to the early 1880s, a period following Reconstruction that saw the expansion of Jim Crow laws and segregation, as well as another election in which the parties clashed over the results. That span saw a surge in the use of the word, as Kelly Wright, assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, points out based on Oxford English Dictionary data. “Hayes’ term was absolutely being described as a kakistocracy,” she says. (1880 was also a general election year in the UK, another country known for its contributions to the English language. That year, William Gladstone became prime minister for the second time; perhaps his opponents were among those giving the word a boost.)In fact, as André Spicer wrote in the Guardian in 2018, the term has been around since at least 1644, during the English civil war, when a sermon warned of “a mad kinde of Kakistocracy” looming.Its roots, of course, go back even further – it’s borrowed from the Greek kakistos, or “worst”, which itself probably comes from the Proto-Indo-European word kakka, meaning “to defecate”.In other words, as Nancy Friedman wrote at her Substack on language in 2016, “you could say that kakistocracy is ‘government by the shitty’.”The term resurfaced on both sides of the Atlantic in the 19th century. Initially it tended to refer to government by the “unskilled, unknowledgeable and unvirtuous”, rather than the infallible aristocracy, Spicer wrote, but by the 20th century, it referred more to government by the corrupt. Today, Friedman’s definition seems most apt.But why does a word that is rarely used in common speech have such longevity? Nicole Holliday, acting associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, likens the term’s use to identifying a disease: “Some of this is about there being a diagnosis, and if there’s a diagnosis, then maybe there’s a treatment,” she says.Wright agrees. Those embracing the term, she says, may be thinking: “I didn’t know there was a word for this, and now that I do it helps me understand what’s going on.”Americans, Holliday says, love labels. “We like having words for things, because then they seem like they’ve been en-thing-ified” – in what sociolinguists call “enregisterment”, kakistocracy becomes an identifiable phenomenon. “Language is social,” Holliday notes, and when we have “conventionalized ways of talking about things, it makes us feel less alone” – especially when other ways of describing the situation feel inadequate.Of course, it’s not just the modern American left that uses the word; another ex-Fox host, Glenn Beck, used it during the Obama years; Boris Yeltsin also received the distinction. In fact, Wright says, usage has been fairly stable for five centuries.“We have no real opposite of kakistocracy, because competency is assumed to be the normal order of things,” Holliday says. “It’s not notable that the government is being run by the most competent people, because, indeed, that’s what you think should be happening. It’s only notable when it’s not.”
This article was updated on 21 November 2024 to reflect Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal from consideration for attorney general. More
