(Headline USA) The Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as U.S. attorney general Tuesday evening, putting a longtime ally of Donald Trump at the helm of a Justice Department that has already been rattled by the firings of disloyal “resistance” operatives in the deep-state who spent the past eight years trying to undermine—and even incarcerate—the Republican leader.
An recently released estimate revealed that nearly 40% of the FBI under the purview of ex-Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray had been assigned to target Trump supporters—particularly those involved in prosecuting the newly pardoned Jan. 6 political dissidents.
HOLY SHIIIT. The FBI just revealed that 5,000 out of their 13,000 agents were focused on January 6th protestors.
39% of the entire bureau, for this: pic.twitter.com/12ToM6I7CL
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 4, 2025
The vote to confirm Bondi fell almost entirely along party lines, with only Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, joining with all Republicans to pass her confirmation 54-46.
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, is expected to oversee a radical reshaping of the department that has been sharply criticized over its weaponization during the previous administration—and before that, dating back at least to the presidency of Barack Obama.
Republicans have praised Bondi as a highly qualified leader they contend will bring much-needed change to a department they believe unfairly pursued Trump through investigations resulting in two federal indictments by special counsel Jack Smith as part of a broader anti-Trump lawfare campaign.
“Pam Bondi has promised to get the department back to its core mission: prosecuting crime and protecting Americans from threats to their safety and their freedoms,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
During his first term in office, Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey, who ultimately acknowledged, under oath, his efforts to spy on the incoming president and wage a campaign of deception that would ensnare him in a political trap that he seditiously helped plot with Obama, Biden and others at a Jan. 5, 2016 meeting.
Comey’s firing helped trigger the multi-year Mueller investigation into the Russia-collusion hoax that was conceived and planted by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The investigation, which reportedly cost $32 million in tax dollars, resulted in no charges against Trump but was effective in damaging his public perception, undermining his ambitious agenda and helping Democrats take over Congress in the 2018 midterms, which gave way almost immediately into a bogus impeachment effort.
Trump also forced out his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, after recused himself from the Mueller probe and allowed Obama plant Rod Rosenstein to oversee it instead.
While Bondi has sought to reassure Democrats that politics would play no part in her decision-making, she also refused at her confirmation hearing last month to rule potential investigations into Trump’s conspirators.
The Justice Department “had been weaponized for years and years and years, and it’s got to stop,” Bondi said during interrogation, noting that prosecutions against Trump amounted to political persecution .
“They targeted Donald Trump,” Bondi told lawmakers.
“They went after him—actually starting back in 2016, they targeted his campaign,” she added. “They have launched countless investigations against him. If I am attorney general, I will not politicize that office.”
Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., praised Bondi as “accomplished and competent” but said his “grave concern is really about President Trump and what he is clearly demanding.”
Democrats raised no such objections to former President Joe Biden’s demands on Garland, nor those of former Obama “wingman” Eric Holder and his successor, Loretta Lynch, all of whom did the bidding of the White House without hesitation or reproach.
Bondi’s defense of investigating the prior administration’s corruption of the DOJ “clearly is a loyalty oath to [Trump] as opposed to a demand for straightforward, candid advice, including if the president is asking for something to be done like the prosecution of a political adversary,” Welch claimed.
Bondi’s confirmation vote came just hours after FBI agents sued the Justice Department over efforts to develop a list of employees involved in the Jan. 6 prosecutions, which agents fear could be a precursor to mass firings.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove last week ordered the acting FBI director to provide the names, titles and offices of all FBI employees who worked on the Jan. 6 cases—which Trump has described as a “grave national injustice.”
Bove, who defended Trump in his criminal cases before joining the administration, said Justice Department officials would carry out a “review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”
Justice Department officials have also recently forced out senior FBI executives, fired prosecutors on Smith’s team who investigated Trump and terminated a group of prosecutors in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office who were hired to help with the massive Jan. 6 investigation.
Trump nominated Bondi for attorney general after it became clear that his initial pick, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, could not win enough support from Republican senators to be confirmed.
Bondi has been a fixture in Trump’s orbit for years, and a regular defender of the president-elect on news programs amid his legal woes.
In a 2023 Fox News appearance, she suggested that “bad” Justice Department prosecutors would be investigated under the Trump administration.
“The investigators will be investigated,” she said.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
