Bondi to join White House impeachment response team
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi will be hired by the Trump White House to help with its impeachment response, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Bondi, who has worked for lobbyist Brian Ballard since leaving the attorney general’s office earlier this year, will join the White House communications staff “temporarily” in order to help with messaging during the ongoing impeachment inquiry, Post reporter Josh Dawsey reported. They will also work on “special projects.”
Former U.S. Treasury spokesman Tony Sayegh will also join Bondi in the
communications office, the Journal reported.
Her expected hire is “both an acknowledgment Trump needs help coordinating a response to the House probe, & a compromise between competing factions in the White House where rivalries opened during a two-weeklong process deliberation over which adviser to bring inside,” Journal reporter Michael C. Bender reported on Twitter.
Bondi was backed by press secretary Stephanie Grisham and chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Bender wrote, but her recent work as a lobbyist created “snarls” in allowing her to get a White House job.
The former attorney general was one of Trump’s first backers in Florida, even as state Republicans such as former Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio were running against Trump in the presidential primaries.
In 2013, a political committee associated with Bondi’s reelection campaign accepted $25,000 in campaign contributions from Trump shortly after her office had been asked to investigate Trump University and declined.
A federal court later approved a $25 million fraud settlement with students who paid the now-defunct Trump University.