Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and lobbyist whose clients have included Amazon and Uber, is President-elect Trump’s new nominee to serve as U.S. attorney general, announced in a post on Trump’s social media platform.
A Trump ally, Bondi is a partner in the D.C. office of Ballard Partners, a lobbying and government affairs firm founded by Brian Ballard, who was called in 2018 the “most powerful lobbyist in Trump’s Washington.” The attorney general of Florida from 2011 until 2019, Bondi was a member of Trump’s Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission during his first term. She was named hours after just-resigned Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz gave up his nomination for A.G.
At Ballard, Bondi chairs the Corporate Regulatory Compliance practice, which is described as rolling out initiatives to help clients “elevate their corporate responsibility reputation,” among other things. Some of the firm’s top-spending federal lobbying clients this year include British American Tobacco and US Sugar. Another firm client is Nippon Steel, which has been working to acquire United States Steel and in April hired the firm’s president Brian Ballard and others. Ballard was one of the top Trump fundraisers in 2016 and a Trump campaign bundler again this cycle—according to a New York Times source, to the tune of $50 million.
In July 2019, Bondi was registered through Ballard to lobby for the government of Qatar on human trafficking issues, along with the firm’s James Rubin, for a fee of $115,000 per month. She severed her position at Ballard in November 2019 to help defend President Trump during his first impeachment trial—in lobbying filings, Bondi listed her former position as “special adviser to the president, office of White House Counsel, special government employee (2019-2020)”—then later restarted her lobbying contracts.
Bondi also holds two chair roles with the right-wing think tank America First Policy institute, a pro-Trump nonprofit that was led by Trump donor Linda McMahon, at its Center for Litigation and Center for Law and Justice. She was appointed to be a Kennedy Center trustee by Trump in 2020 as a plum for her support, and she acted as a campaign surrogate this year.
