With President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Justice set to appear before the Senate for her confirmation hearings this week, Pam Bondi’s career as the attorney general of Florida is drawing renewed scrutiny over the friendly positions her office took on businesses that donated to Republican organizations.
Bondi’s career as Florida attorney general, while defended by Republicans, was marred by repeatedly dropping lawsuits against companies that donated to the Republican State Leadership Committee and the Republican Attorneys General Association, two organizations that supported Bondi.
The RSLC works to “recruit, train, and elect” Republican officials for state-level offices and RAGA does the same, though it is specifically focused on supporting Republican attorney generals around the country. Between 2002 and 2014, RAGA operated as a branch of the RSLC and, from its founding in 1999, the organization solicited donations from corporations and lobbyists, which it would use to help support Republican politicians. The group has, however, drawn scrutiny for the apparent relationship between the industries and businesses that donate to it and the actions then taken by Republican attorneys general, including Bondi.
In 2014, for example, Bondi’s office dropped a lawsuit against the travel booking website Expedia over an alleged scheme to withhold taxes in Florida. The decision to drop the lawsuit came after Expedia donated more than $190,000 to the RSLC and RAGA between 2011 and 2014. While Bondi denied that the company’s “access” had any “bearing” on the decision to drop the suit, it is part of a pattern of behavior.
“My office aggressively protects Floridians from unfair and deceptive business practices, and absolutely no access to me or or my staff is going to have any bearing on my efforts to protect Floridians,” Bondi told the New York Times at the time.
In 2014, The New York Times reported that the for-profit education company Bridgepoint Education, which was the subject of scrutiny from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and multiple investigations from the Department of Justice, had hired lobbyists to convince Bondi and other state attorneys general to not bring charges against them.
Bridgepoint, like Expedia, made considerable donations to both the RSLC and the RAGA.
While Bondi and other Republican attorneys general elected not to sue the company, other states found success in court. In 2022, a lawsuit brought by California resulted in Ashford University and Zovio, Inc., which was formerly Bridgepoint Education, being ordered to pay more than $22 million in penalties. Zovio, Inc. was found to have misled students about the cost of an education at places like Ashford University as well as the career outcomes they could expect from their programs.
In a statement from the Florida attorney general’s office on the Bridgepoint Education issue, Bondi’s office said that it had a meeting with the company in 2013, where it “laid out all of the substantial changes they had undertaken attheir schools to address the issues that had been prevalent in the other for-profit matters we had investigated and settled,” and again denied that access to Bondi or her staff had influenced her decisions as attorney general.
The lobbyists hired to work on Bridgepoint Education’s behalf were from Dickstein Shapiro, according to the Times report, a firm that had itself paid some $150,000 to both the RSLC and RAGA between 2011 and 2014. The same lobbying firm was contracted by Accretive Health, a hospital debt collection firm, in 2012. Accretive Health had been under investigation in Minnesota for its debt collection practices, an investigation which led to the company being forced to cease all operations in the state and pay $2.5 million in fines in 2012.
According to the Minnesota Attorney General’s office, Accretive Health employees and hospital staff were pressured to collect money from patients, with strategies including attempting to make patients believe that they wouldn’t be treated if they didn’t pay beforehand. Dickstein Shapiro was contracted, per the 2014 Times report, to ensure that other state attorneys general didn’t follow Minnesota’s example.
In a statement responding to Accretive Health’s lobbying, Bondi’s office said that lobbying played no role in the office’s decision-making, saying that “this office conducted its own due diligence by, among other things, contacting the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office when Minnesota’s allegations came to light” and that the “unfair debt collection practices alleged in the Minnesota complaint appeared to be largely Minnesota-specific.”
Beyond dropping or refusing to bring suits, Bondi’s office has also taken industry-friendly positions on issues related to the firearms industry. In 2014, Bondi co-authored an amicus brief in NRA v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, in support of the National Rifle Association when it was suing to lower the age required to buy firearms from 21 years old to 18. In another case, Shew. Melloy, Bondi co-authored a brief arguing that Connecticut’s ban on semi-automatic weapons was unconstitutional. In 2013 and 2014, the NRA donated more than $130,000 to RSLC and RAGA.
Bondi also used her post as attorney general to take “business-friendly” positions. For instance, in 2014 Bondi, alongside 20 other attorneys general, filed an amicus brief on behalf of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which had filed a lawsuit aimed at preventing the EPA cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay. In the brief, the attorney generals sought to question the EPA’s authority to set “the maximum amount of pollution a body of water can receive and still meet state water quality standards.”
In 2013, Bondi’s office filed a similar brief in a case concerning the Clean Air Act and, in 2014, Bondi co-filed a brief in a challenge against the EPA’s authority for permitting under the Clean Water Act. The group that brought the case, the National Mining Association, had donated some $75,000 to the RSLC and the RAGA between 2012 and 2014.
All told, the RSLC and the RAGA took over $1.26 million from the fossil fuel industry and 2013 and 2014, according to an analysis by Accountable.US. Tony Carrk, the group’s executive director, told Salon that in her time as Florida’s top prosecutor, “Pam Bondi frequently played favorites with big corporate donors and political insiders at the expense of everyday consumers, patients and the public good.”
“Nothing indicates Bondi would change her office-peddling modus operandi as America’s top justice official,” Carrk added, “which would be part and parcel with President-elect Trump’s agenda of further rigging the system in favor of wealthy corporate interests.”
Perhaps the most infamous example of Bondi making favorable decisions for those who support her political aspirations came in 2013, when the Donald J. Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to And Justice for All, an organization that was helping engineer Bondi’s re-election. This donation came around the same time that the Florida attorney general’s office, which Bondi helmed, was considering joining an investigation into Trump University.
According to an Associated Press report from 2016, Bondi “personally solicited” the contribution from Trump before eventually deciding against joining the investigation. Trump later held a $3,000-a-person fundraiser for Bondi at his Mar-a-Lago estate and both he and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, gave $500 to Bondi’s campaign in 2013. The next year Trump and Ivanka donated some $125,000 to the Republican Party of Florida, which was the Bondi campaign’s single largest donor.
Bondi, in a statement to NBC2 News at the time, said that “no one in my office ever opened an investigation on Trump University nor was there a basis for doing so.”
A Trump spokesperson not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bondi has consistently denied allegations of impropriety during her time as attorney general, including in reference to the donation from Trump and his family.
But in Carrk’s opinion, the issue of Trump and Bondi’s relationship with respect to the Trump University investigation, or lack thereof, suggests that “Pam Bondi was targeted with a bribe in the form of major political donations.”
“Consistent with her own pattern of selling out her office to wealthy corporate special interests, Bondi did exactly what Donald Trump expected of her by not fighting on behalf of Floridians scammed by the future president. Bondi makes no apologies for her history of cronyism and favoritism toward powerful insiders at the expense of everyday families, and the American people can expect more of the same should she be confirmed as U.S. Attorney General,” Carrk said.