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pam bondi
Trump's New Attorney General Pick: A Corporate Lobbyist Who Did Wall Street's Bidding
"We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to let corporate wrongdoers off the hook," said one consumer advocate.
Nov 22, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump's choice to succeed Matt Gaetz as his nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Justice is a registered lobbyist who has worked on behalf of Amazon, Uber, and other corporate giants.
Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, has lobbied for the same firm as Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff pick, according to Senate filings. Bondi also reportedly has ties to the lawyer who represented Trump confidant Elon Musk and Tesla in a federal securities fraud case.
Bondi, who helped represent Trump during his first impeachment trial and took part in the effort to reverse the results of the 2020 election, currently serves as chair of the Center for Litigation at the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank that's playing a central role in the presidential transition and in crafting Trump's agenda.
Trump's selection of Bondi to lead the Justice Department prompted renewed scrutiny of her record as Florida's top prosecutor, particularly her favorable treatment of big banks and other firms implicated in the foreclosure crisis.
The American Prospect's David Dayen, the author of an acclaimed book on Wall Street foreclosure fraud, noted Friday that Bondi's victory in Florida's 2010 attorney general election was aided in part by donations from Lender Processing Services and other firms that were facing investigations launched by the office of Bondi's predecessor.
In 2011, Dayen recounted, Bondi fired two attorneys in Florida's Economic Crimes division, June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards, after freezing them out of a national probe of foreclosure fraud despite their extensive knowledge of the issue.
"There's a lot out there about Bondi, including her soliciting a $25,000 contribution from Trump and subsequently scotching an investigation into his fake university, while lying about how many complaints from former students at the university she received," Dayen wrote. "She also became a lobbyist with Trump-whisperer Brian Ballard after her stint as attorney general of Florida ended, seeking sweetheart treatment for clients like Amazon, GM, and Uber."
"But the firing of Clarkson and Edwards, which is detailed further in my 2016 book Chain of Title, is the most emblematic example of Bondi's extreme willingness to do the bidding of anyone who pays her," Dayen added. "The conversion of corporate donations into protection for that corporation, even if it meant firing her own staff, was done without so much as the bat of an eyelash."
"We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to serve as a Trump loyalist and attack dog at the expense of the department's independence and integrity."
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, pointed to Bondi's failed legal push to overturn the Affordable Care Act as further evidence that she is "a manifestly unqualified candidate for attorney general."
"Not being Matt Gaetz does not qualify you to be attorney general of the United States," said Weissman. "We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to let corporate wrongdoers off the hook. As Florida attorney general, Pam Bondi sued to overturn the Affordable Care Act, sued to block the ACA ban on health insurance companies price gouging people with preexisting conditions, and opposed efforts to reduce homeowners' mortgage loans in negotiations with financial institutions that had engaged in fraud and misconduct."
"We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to spread false claims about voter fraud and to undermine the Department of Justice's historic commitment to protecting voting rights," he added. "Bondi echoed Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election and has brought lawsuits to restrict voting access.
"We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to serve as a Trump loyalist and attack dog at the expense of the department's independence and integrity," Weissman continued. "In short, we should expect an Attorney General Bondi to lead a Department of Injustice. Americans deserve better."
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Group Files FEC Complaint Over Trump Super PAC's $500,000 Gift From 'Mystery Donors'
"Voters have a right to know when wealthy special interests are spending money to influence elections and rig the political system in their favor," said Saurav Ghosh of the Campaign Legal Center.
May 02, 2022
A watchdog group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Monday accusing "mystery donors"--one of which may be millionaire businessman Bill Pulte--of using a Delaware limited liability company to funnel $500,000 into former President Donald Trump's super PAC, a violation of campaign finance laws prohibiting so-called straw donors.
The Campaign Legal Center's (CLC) complaint specifically alleges that "Pulte and/or unknown other persons" used ML Organization, LLC as a shell company to pour money into the Make America Great Again, Again! super PAC without having to disclose their identities.
"The facts indicate that this LLC is a straw donor and not the true source of this $500,000 contribution, an illegal tactic."
"There is no record of ML Organization having any activities or generating any income since it was registered as a Delaware domestic limited liability company... in April 2018," the complaint states. "ML Organization has no website, social media account, business listings or online records, or any other discernible online presence."
CLC goes on to note that ML Organization "disclosed an address in Boca Raton, Florida (located within Palm Beach County), in connection with the $500,000 contribution made in its name, but searches of public records databases indicate that the LLC does not appear to own any property in Palm Beach County, Florida, or elsewhere."
Citing public records, CLC points out that Pulte "owns the property at the address listed for ML Organization on FEC reports" and that the property "appears to be Pulte's home."
"The available information supports the conclusion that ML Organization did not have the means to contribute $500,000 to an [independent-expenditure only political committee] absent an infusion of funds provided to it for that specific purpose," the complaint reads. "Accordingly, there is reason to believe that one or more unknown person(s) (William Pulte and/or other persons) violated the prohibition on making contributions in the name of another."
Saurav Ghosh, CLC's director of federal reform, said in a statement that "voters have a right to know when wealthy special interests are spending money to influence elections and rig the political system in their favor."
"Shell companies like ML Organization, LLC are often used to funnel secret money to super PACs, concealing the true contributor's identity," Ghosh continued. "The facts indicate that this LLC is a straw donor and not the true source of this $500,000 contribution, an illegal tactic that erodes transparency."
\u201cOne of the Trump super PAC's top donors is "ML Organization LLC," which gave $500K...and may not exist? \n\nThere is an "ML Organization LLC" in DE, but no entity by that name in FL. \n\nHowever, the address on the FEC report is associated with "Twitter Philanthropist" Bill @pulte.\u201d— Brendan Fischer (@Brendan Fischer) 1643664216
Make America Great Again, Again!--which has billed itself as the "only Trump-approved super PAC"--was formed by Trump allies in 2021 for the stated purpose of supporting "Trump-endorsed candidates across the country who have proven to be fighters of the MAGA movement."
Led by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, the super PAC brought in more than $4.3 million in donations in the final quarter of last year and had $9.5 million on hand to start 2022.
The super PAC reported receiving a $500,000 donation from ML Organization on November 1, 2021. ML Organization and the Texas-based firm Tranquil Path Investments, LTD were the super PAC's largest donors in the last three months of 2021.
In a Twitter post on Monday, Ghosh implored the FEC to "take action to enforce the federal straw donor ban and protect voters' right to know when wealthy special interests are spending money to influence elections and rig the political system in their favor!"
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For Trump and GOP, No Hope, Just the Audacity of Lies
They have nothing to sell but fear itself.
Aug 30, 2020
During the first Clinton term, I worked on the public TV series In Performance at the White House.
One of our episodes was an Aretha Franklin concert on the South Lawn. The show was great. It goes without saying what a remarkable talent she was. But Ms. Franklin was demanding, too. At one point, she insisted we shoot her in a designer ballgown as she made a grand entrance, coming down the stairs from the executive mansion's Truman Balcony. We cut it from the final show; for whatever reason, no matter how we tried in the editing room, it just looked cheesy.
The potential for cheese didn't stop Donald and Melania Trump. Thursday night, they dramatically descended that same staircase just before the president made his big acceptance speech.
Here's another difference between our show and Thursday's big South Lawn GOP convention finale: Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul.
The Trumps just think they're royalty. And so do a lot of their followers.
Because my, what a coronation the Republicans had! The floodlights! The fireworks! The empty, inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda! The massive and flagrant violations of the Hatch Act, using government property and personnel for political gain! Trump! Trump! Trump!
Friday morning, much of the nation awoke with a hangover, having gotten literally or metaphorically drunk the night before from either the elation of seeing their boy pour on his patented brand of bull or the depressing realization that he could still win this thing.
What's clear from his 70-minute remarks and all the other speechifying is that Donald Trump and his Republican cohort have decided they can lie with impunity, subvert the truth and heedlessly break the rules because their devoted base doesn't know or care about such lawlessness, and nobody pushes back much, so why the hell not?
The notion that each of us should possess a moral compass that guides our conscience and actions no matter what, no matter where you are or whom you're with, has vanished. Trump and his gang are poster children for situational ethics; they'll do or say anything, even incite violence. The ends always justify the means.
And they also justify the mean -- that is, the cruel, uncaring heartlessness of gimme-gimme avarice and the bigotry of race, religion, gender and class prejudice. On the first night of their confab, when young right-wing activist Charlie Kirk absurdly described Trump as "the bodyguard of western civilization," every racist hound in a 5000-mile radius heard the dog whistle: Kirk, of course, really meant white Christian civilization.
It was an unending tumble downhill from there. Kimberly Guilfoyle, girlfriend of Don Trump, Jr., national chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee 2020 and former Fox News personality, shouted her way, Nuremburg-style, through a speech in which she - former wife of California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom -bellowed, "Do you support the cancel culture, the cosmopolitan elites of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden, who blame America first? Do you think America is to blame?!"
Cloud Cuckooland hypocrisy filled the air. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the entitled St. Louis couple who pointed guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators, warned, "No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats' America." Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who accepted an illegal $25,000 campaign contribution from a Trump charity shortly before she dismissed a lawsuit against now-defunct Trump University, accused Joe Biden of nepotism - which, compared to the Trumps turning the Federal government into one more corrupt family business, is worthy of open mic night at the Ha-Ha Club. In his remarks, Vice President Pence consoled the sister of Federal Protective Service Agent Dave Patrick Underwood, shot and killed during the recent protests in Oakland, California, but failed to mention his alleged murderer is an acolyte of the Boogaloo Bois, the alt-right white supremacists actively seeking race war.
Trying to divert attention from Trump's fatal fumbling of the crisis, the pandemic was barely acknowledged and when it was, the falsehoods and misleading statements flowed. There were occasional expressions of sympathy, but largely, the coronavirus plague was presented as if it was something aberrant that had happened once upon a time in the past, even though during the four nights of the GOP convention, more people died from COVID-19 than were killed on 9/11. At the acceptance speech, there was no social distancing and barely a soul wore a mask. Masks, of course, are for losers...
Over the course of his acceptance speech, like many of those who went before him last week, Trump threw the requisite red meat to his base - lock your doors, the socialists and anarchists are on the march, and they're using Joe "the Destroyer of American Greatness" Biden to burn down your suburban homes and steal your guns and hamburgers! There were no new programs proposed, no agenda for a second term except more of the same. In fact, several parts of the address seemed an almost word-for-word reiteration of his 2016 "And I Alone Can Fix It" convention speech with one big difference -- the wild-eyed accusations of a challenger seemed more than a little weird when they're coming from the incumbent on whose watch all of this alleged mayhem is happening.
Also, compared to 2016, Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne noted, the 2020 Trump looks like a man who knows his show is about to be canceled." With any luck, a heavy turnout and a modicum of common sense, the kind of claptrap the president spews --his own little, fascistic Triumph of the Bilge - won't be enough to sway the swing voters he needs to win him reelection. But danger lurks. The kind of unhinged demagoguery in which Trump excels is seriously seductive to some. There are polling numbers out there that indicate shifts back toward this incompetent, corrupt bully -- that the panic he peddles makes the hesitant, weak, and irrationally violent turn up the heat and pick up their weapons.
That's because the only thing Trump has to sell is fear itself. People like him and the countless dictators before him use red-in-tooth-and-claw propaganda and despicable scare tactics because they work. The vitriol so rampant in Thursday night's acceptance speech was repeated Friday night at his rally in New Hampshire and will keep hammering us until November and beyond. We must turn our backs to it and vote with the conscience and sense of community he lacks.
Trump sees himself as emperor; the only royal title he truly deserves is Clown Prince. But like those sinister jokers in the movies whose villainy lurks behind a painted smile, Trump despises anyone else's happiness and only seeks to consolidate power and malevolence through chaos.
In a 1787 letter, patriot John Jay, the man who would become our first chief justice, asked, "Shall we have a king? Not in my opinion while other Expedients remain untried." Our constitutional presidency was the answer and its success would be tied to the faithful adherence to the three separate yet equal branches of government and the system of checks and balances.
But nine years later, in his Farewell Address, the man to whom Jay asked his question, our first president, George Washington, warned that our government could be manipulated by "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" seeking "to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
Send in the clowns. Those men and their despot at the top are here. When it comes to our democracy, if Donald Trump is reelected and the Senate remains Republican, you've only seen the beginning - and caught a glimpse of the end. Contrary to all the GOP convention bombast, the worst is yet to come.
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