The Washington Post’s editorial board evaluated President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees on Sunday, ahead of their confirmation hearings, which begin on Tuesday. In it, the board called Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, “qualified” and “serious.” Bondi previously lobbied for Amazon; the Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chair.
“Florida’s former attorney general is qualified; lawyers who have worked with her report that she is serious,” the Post editorial board wrote of Bondi, who was previously Florida’s attorney general and served on Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial.
While the board acknowledged, “We would not have picked any of his choices for our hypothetical Cabinet,” it said that is “not the standard” that “should apply when evaluating executive nominees for Senate confirmation. The president-elect won the election. He deserves deference in building his team, and the Americans who elected him deserve an operational government, absent disqualifying deficiencies in competence, temperament or philosophy.” (The editorial board gave two of Trump’s 15 Cabinet Secretary nominees — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the thumbs down.)
Naming Bondi as qualified might seem odd, given the paper’s previous reporting on the Trump loyalist. But in light of Bezos killing the Post‘s endorsement of Kamala Harris, Bezos sending a hearty congrats along with his fellow billionaires to Trump following the election, Bondi’s previous Amazon lobbying connection, and the Post‘s refusal to run a cartoon critical of Bezos from Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes (who then resigned), the paper expressing support for Bondi to lead the Justice Department feels like what one should expect in the years ahead.
Bondi is a partner at Ballard Partners, which lobbies for Amazon. She was listed as lobbying for Amazon in 2020, the last year of Trump’s first term. The firm reported that Bondi lobbied the White House for Amazon on issues related to autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles. She also lobbied for the company on trade issues.
Reporters working in newsrooms like the Post operate independently of the opinion and editorial sections (in fact, staff was furious when the Harris endorsement was nixed), and the paper’s previous reporting doesn’t jive with the thumbs up its board has given. In December, the newspaper noted that Bondi pushed baseless claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election. In November, it ran a column from Philip Bump discussing how Bondi has used her authority to aid Trump in the past, and how Trump is likely counting on her to “exact retribution within the department for investigating Trump and his 2016 campaign.”
The outlet also reported on a $25,000 donation made in 2013 from the Donald J. Trump Foundation to the then-Florida AG while Bondi was deciding whether to investigate 22 fraud claims against Trump University. Following the donation, Bondi, who was gearing up for a 2014 reelection campaign, declined to take action against Trump University. In 2016, Trump aides said the foundation made a mistake with the donation, which was a potential violation of federal rules that prohibit charities from giving aid to political candidates.