AILSA CHANG, HOST:
This afternoon, President-elect Donald Trump's first pick for attorney general, former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration for the job. Then this evening, Trump named his new pick to lead the Justice Department, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas has been following all of these developments and joins us now. Hi, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
CHANG: OK, it's been a busy, busy day in your world. Matt Gaetz has dropped out, and now Trump has a new pick - Pam Bondi. What can you tell us about her?
LUCAS: Well, as you said at the top there, she is a former attorney general for the state of Florida, served in that job from 2011 to 2019. Before that, though, she worked as a local prosecutor in the state. In a statement announcing his decision, Trump today said that when Bondi was a prosecutor, she was very tough, he said, on violent criminals and made the streets safe for Florida families. And then as state attorney general, Trump says that Bondi worked on stopping the flow of deadly drugs in trying to reduce the number of deaths from fentanyl, which is, of course, part of the opioid crisis. Trump didn't mention this, but it is notable - Bondi also spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2016 when Trump was running for president. And she was also one of his lawyers during Trump's first impeachment.
CHANG: That's right. OK, well, all of this comes just hours after Matt Gaetz announced that he was stepping aside, and his bid for attorney general was pretty controversial. What did Gaetz say about why he was withdrawing today?
LUCAS: Well, look, Gaetz was a controversial pick from the get-go. He was on Capitol Hill yesterday for meetings with Republican senators to try to advance his bid. Several of those senators, though, of course, expressed reservations about Gaetz potentially leading the Justice Department. Gaetz said this afternoon in a post on X announcing his decision that those meetings with senators were excellent. He also said that momentum for his bid for attorney general was strong. That's how he described it, but he also said it was clear to him that his confirmation was, quote, "unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump-Vance transition." He said that there's no time to waste on what he called a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle over his confirmation. He said that Trump's Justice Department has to be in place and ready on Day 1 of the new administration. And so Gaetz said that he was withdrawing his name from consideration for attorney general.
CHANG: OK. There were, of course, concerns over Gaetz's background, investigations into him, his temperament for attorney general. Is Bondi a different sort of pick, would you say?
LUCAS: Well, look, Gaetz had an enormous amount of baggage - the federal sex trafficking investigation into him that was closed ultimately without charges, a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. Gaetz, it has to be said, has denied any wrongdoing. But the specter of those investigations certainly hung over him in any potential confirmation. He also, it has to be said, had almost no legal experience and almost no allies on Capitol Hill.
Bondi, on the other hand, does not have all of those obvious issues, and importantly, she does have a legal background as a prosecutor, like I mentioned a minute ago. So I think a lot of Republican senators on Capitol Hill who had reservations about Gaetz will be happy with this pick of Bondi. But like Gaetz, Bondi does have a yearslong relationship with President-elect Trump. As I said a minute ago, she was an attorney for Trump in his first impeachment. She also heads the legal arm of the America First Policy Institute, which is led by Linda McMahon, who is Trump's pick to lead the Department of Education in his second term. So Bondi is very much rooted in the world of Donald Trump.
CHANG: Indeed. Well, I know it's early Ryan, but how do Bondi's prospects look for confirmation in the Senate at this point?
LUCAS: Well, what I would say to that is that Gaetz's nomination was a huge surprise. The blowback to it was immediate. Several Republican senators told our colleague Claudia Grisales today that they were happy that Gaetz had withdrawn. It is early. Bondi was just announced. We'll have to see how folks on the Hill take this in. But Bondi does have the legal experience, obviously deep connections that I just mentioned in Trump world, and Republican senators have said - several of them - that they think Trump deserves to get the team of advisers that he feels that he wants and needs.
CHANG: And assuming that she is confirmed, how important might Bondi be to Trump's second term agenda, you think?
LUCAS: Well, look, this is a huge job - attorney general is. And it's a really important one. The attorney general oversees more than 100,000 people who work for the Justice Department, that includes oversight of the FBI. The attorney general enforces federal laws. That includes voting rights laws, civil rights laws. They prosecute federal crimes. There's a big role in national security. Trump, of course, during the campaign, talked about retribution against his perceived political enemies, folks at the Justice Department, including. We'll see whether he tries to do so once he's back in office. But the big question for Bondi, if she's confirmed, and, in fact, anyone who's going to lead the Justice Department under Trump in his second term, is whether she will agree to use the Justice Department and its enormous powers to further that goal of vengeance that Trump talked about during the campaign.
CHANG: That is NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas. Thank you so much, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thank you.
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