Pam Bondi did Trump a favor in Florida. He wants another. ■ ■
The timing was perfect.
Last Tuesday, the White
House announced that former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi would join President Trump’s impeachment propaganda team.
Two days later came news of the settlement in which Trump admitted to running a charitable foundation that helped only himself. Trump had vowed never to settle the lawsuit by New York’s attorney general.
From that foundation in September 2013 came the $25,000 check to a committee backing Bondi’s reelection. One month later, Bondi’s office decided not to sue Trump University on behalf of Floridians who claimed that the bogus “college” had swindled them.
The donation to Florida’s top law enforcement officer were cited in the settlement as one of several examples of improper spending by the foundation, according to The Washington Post.
Bondi might have realized that charitable foundations can’t donate to campaigns. But, hey, state ethics officials saw no problem. Why should she care?
Given the political symbiosis, it was inevitable that Trump and Bondi should reunite. Trump tries to make Americans believe everything but the facts. So does Bondi. Trump’s hypocrisy is limitless. So is Bondi’s.
Last June, Bondi wrote a fawning pro-Trump commentary for The Miami Herald. In it, Bondi claimed that Trump has done much to “strengthen federal background checks” for firearms sales.
In fact, Trump signed legislation that limits background checks for mentally ill Social Security recipients. He vowed to veto legislation that would expand background checks to gun shows and Internet sales. Nearly 90 percent of Americans support that change.
As for Bondi, she held statewide summits on human tracking. Yet after leaving office last January, Bondi began working for the Ballard Partners lobbying firm. One of Bondi’s clients was Qatar. Human-rights groups say most foreign workers drawn to the country wind up as indentured servants.
Faced with choosing between public good and personal advancement, Bondi has made her priorities clear.
Bondi joined the Republican-led lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, even though Florida leads the nation in signups.
Bondi led the charge by the Florida Cabinet — which acts the Clemency Board — that rolled back rights restoration for exfelons to the Jim Crow Era.
Bondi could have proposed that the Clemency Board pardon the African-Americans — known as the Groveland 4 — who were wrongly accused of raping a white Lake County woman in 1949. The pardon came after she was out of office.
Bondi kept appealing federal court rulings against same-sex marriage bans like Florida’s until the 2013 Supreme Court decision that invalidated such prohibitions. Then she fought to keep the state from paying the other side’s legal fees.
Bondi sided with polluters here and elsewhere. She joined another Republicanled lawsuit against cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay. It’s 800 miles from Tallahassee.
Bondi fired two mortgage fraud investors for being too hard on lenders as Florida recovered from the housing bust.
Bondi took roughly $50,000 in perks from the Republican Attorneys General Association. The money came from private donors who had issues before Bondi and her counterparts.
Bondi filed one of the last state lawsuits against the opioid industry, despite the damage it did to Florida.
And, lest we forget, Bondi asked thenGov. Rick Scott to delay an execution so she could attend a campaign fundraiser. Bondi had supported legislation to speed up executions.
Actually, it’s too bad that Bondi isn’t joining Trump’s Cabinet. She would fit right in.
No president has lost more Cabinet members to ethics scandals and questionable behavior in his first term than Trump. That would be the same Trump who took office pledging to “drain the swamp.”
The problems included abuse of government travel rules and misusing the office for personal gain. Alex Acosta lost his job as labor secretary after new scrutiny of his lenient plea deal for sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
One of the departed was Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Last week, the department offered a lucrative water deal to a former lobbying client of current Secretary David Bernhardt. The swamp is rising.
Bondi’s temp work likely will take her back to Fox News, from which she launched her 2010 campaign as a “legal expert.” Nice. The network with no standards suits a woman with no standards defending a man with no standards.