Washington — The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Pam Bondi as attorney general, installing a key ally of President Trump’s to take the helm of the Justice Department.
Bondi’s nomination for attorney general was approved by the upper chamber 54 to 46, with one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, joining all Republicans in voting to confirm her. She will take over as the nation’s top law enforcement officer as Mr. Trump has pledged to end what he calls the weaponization of the Justice Department and threatened to target his critics.
During her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Bondi said she would “not politicize” the department and said “justice will be administered evenhandedly throughout this country.”
“If confirmed, I will work to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice and each of its components,” she said. “Under my watch, the partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all.”
In the days since Mr. Trump began his second term in office, the Senate has been working to confirm his Cabinet picks. The GOP-led upper chamber installed the top members of his national security team first and now is moving to approve the remaining nominees who will lead federal departments.
Bondi’s nomination was first approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 12-10 party-line vote before it was considered by the upper chamber.
As attorney general, Bondi will oversee a sprawling department that includes numerous law enforcement components, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Both agencies have often been the target of attacks by Mr. Trump. The president selected another staunch defender, Kash Patel, to lead the FBI.
Bondi will also have the power to investigate the federal probes involving Mr. Trump that were overseen by former special counsel Jack Smith. Smith resigned from the role before the president returned to office, and the two cases brought against Mr. Trump were dismissed because of longstanding Justice Department policy that precludes the prosecution of a sitting president.
Now, with Mr. Trump back in the White House, his administration has been overseeing the ouster of certain Justice Department employees. Acting Attorney General James McHenry, selected by the president to temporarily lead the department, fired roughly a dozen Justice Department employees who worked for Smith because “he did not believe these officials could be trusted to faithfully implement the president’s agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the president,” a Justice Department official said.
And department leadership directed the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Edward Martin, to terminate prosecutors who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to a Jan. 31 memo reviewed by CBS News.
At the FBI, which is a component of the Justice Department, the acting deputy attorney general ordered the acting head of the bureau to compile a list of all current and former FBI employees who were assigned to the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack for review to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary,” according to a memo reviewed by CBS News.
FBI supervisors have also received questionnaires for certain agents in their field offices that contain questions about their possible work on the Jan. 6 cases, such as whether they participated in a search, if they made any arrests or testified in court.
Bondi has previously suggested that the Justice Department prosecutors who were involved in the cases against Mr. Trump would face their own investigation and has repeated the president’s claim that there is a so-called deep state of career government employees working to undermine him.
“The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. 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,” she told Fox News after he was charged in 2023.
Bondi takes the helm of the Justice Department without the federal prosecution experience that her predecessors have had. She served two terms as Florida’s attorney general, during which her office led lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act and former President Barack Obama’s immigration policies.
After leaving office in 2019, she worked as a lawyer and lobbyist for Ballard Partners, a Florida-based firm. During her tenure there, she represented corporations including General Motors, Amazon and Uber, and lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government, according to registration forms submitted to the federal government.
Bondi briefly left her post at Ballard Partners to serve as a member of Mr. Trump’s defense team during the first set of impeachment proceedings pursued by congressional Democrats in his first term. She defended Mr. Trump’s July 2019 call with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, in which he pressured Zelenskyy to investigate former President Biden.
Mr. Trump was impeached by the Democrat-led House, becoming the third U.S. president to be impeached, and acquitted by the Republican-led Senate following a trial, where Bondi was part of Mr. Trump’s team.
She also spearheaded legal efforts following the 2020 election to challenge the results in Pennsylvania and falsely asserted Mr. Trump won the battleground state. Bondi told the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing that she accepts the results of the election.
Mr. Trump selected Bondi for attorney general after his first pick, former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, withdrew his name from consideration. Gaetz had been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, and he denied any wrongdoing.
