Pam Bondi refuses to say Donald Trump lost in 2020 and suggests election was ‘stolen’

Pam Bondi refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election as she was grilled on her previously espoused beliefs that there was election fraud that year.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) pressed the former Florida attorney general and corporate lobbyist during a Senate confirmation hearing after she was appointed by President-elect Donald Trump to be the U.S. attorney general.

“The results? I accept, of course, that Joe Biden is president of the United States, but what I can tell you is what I saw first-hand when I went to Pennsylvania as an advocate for the campaign. I was an advocate for the campaign, and I was on the ground in Pennsylvania, and I saw many things there,” Bondi said.

“But do I accept the results? Of course I do. Do I agree with what happened? I saw so much. No one from either side of the aisle should want there to be any issues with election integrity in our country. We should all want our elections to be free and fair and the rules and the laws to be followed,” she continued.

Durbin slammed her for that response, stating, “I think that question deserved a yes or a no. I think the length of your answer is an indication that you weren’t prepared to answer yes.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) jumped on the bandwagon during her allotted time, asking Bondi point-blank to name who won the 2020 election. Bondi couldn’t give a straight answer, only stating, “Joe Biden is the president of the United States.”

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That prompted Hirono to say, “Ms. Bondi, you know that there is a difference between acknowledging it and — you know, I can say that Donald Trump won the 2024 election. I may not like it, but I can say it. You cannot say who won the 2020 presidential election.” She added, “It’s disturbing that you can’t give voice to that fact.”

Bondi also faced a barrage of tough questions on Wednesday that challenged her loyalty to the incoming president — including whether she would act as his instrument for political vengeance.

After Trump’s initial choice, ex-U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, pulled out following a shocking federal sex trafficking investigation and ethics probe that left his confirmation chances virtually zero, Bondi was picked.

The former Florida attorney general has also dipped her toes into corporate lobbying, making her one of the most scrutinized members of Trump’s Cabinet if confirmed.

If confirmed, Bondi would head the very department that prosecuted the past and potential future president in two separate criminal cases that never reached trial — the federal lawsuit accusing the Republican of inciting the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the classified documents case related to the storage of boxes of sensitive information at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Bondi, known for her staunch support of Trump and long-time presence in his circle, has been a regular defending him on news programs. She is set to answer questions Wednesday regarding her public denunciations of the criminal cases against the former president and his bombastic promises of revenge against those involved in the prosecutions.

Earlier in 2023, Bondi doubled down on Trump’s threats during a Fox News segment, saying, “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors, will be prosecuted — the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.”

She spoke of supposed deep state operatives “hiding in the shadows” during Trump’s presidency who now “have a spotlight on them” and “can all be investigated.”

Last May, Bondi joined Trump’s legal brigade in New York to back him in the courtroom amidst his initial criminal indictments in the hush money case.

This concerned alleged bookkeeping fabrications within the Trump Organization to conceal a $130,000 payment that was meant to prevent porn star Stormy Daniels from going public with an affair she claimed to have had with Trump in 2006, jeopardizing his 2016 election campaign.

Trump was sentenced just last week after being found guilty on 34 felony counts, but he walked away without any punishment. Bondi, appearing on Fox News with Kash Patel, Trump’s choice for FBI director, expressed her dismay: “A tremendous amount of trust is lost in the justice system tonight. The American people see through it.”

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s pivotal immunity ruling last August, she didn’t hold back, labeling special counsel Jack Smith, who secured the two federal indictments against Trump, a “rabid dog.” Following Trump’s electoral triumph three months later, Smith dropped both cases.

Bondi has a history of making waves; as Florida’s first female attorney general elected in 2010 with Sarah Palin’s backing, she took on Obama’s healthcare reform alongside over two dozen states, only to see it upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. She staunchly defended Florida’s same-sex marriage ban, insisting states should decide, echoing Trump’s later rationale for celebrating the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Moreover, Bondi targeted pill mills for their role in the opioid epidemic.

Years later, in 2013, an ethics probe targeted her after she actively sought a political donation from Trump while her office was debating to join a lawsuit against Trump University for fraud. Trump obliged with a $25,000 check to a committee backing her from his charitable foundation, breaching laws against charities’ involvement in political activities.

Following the donation, her office dropped the idea of suing Trump’s firm, citing a sudden lack of sufficient grounds. Both parties denied any misconduct, and the state’s ethics commission discarded the complaints when a prosecutor appointed by then-Gov. Rick Scott, declared evidence too weak for bribery charges.

Before her term as attorney general, Bondi prosecuted cases “ranging from domestic violence to capital murder,” spending 18 years at the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office. After joining lobbying firm Ballard Partners in 2019, her bio boasts she also lobbied for companies like Amazon.

Now, as Democrats prepare to grill her on her lobbying history, they’ll be scrutinizing potential conflicts of interest that may conflict with prosecuting entities in her role heading the Justice Department.

Between 2019 and 2024, she registered 30 clients, including businesses like Uber and Amazon, during her time at Ballard Partners, a firm headed by Brian Ballard, who has ties to Trump. During her stint with Ballard, she also registered as a foreign agent for the government of Qatar to work with anti-human-trafficking efforts ahead of the World Cup in 2022.

She also represented a Kuwaiti firm, KGL Investment Company, also known as KGLI. That firm paid Ballard $300,000 in 2019 to lobby the White House, National Security Council, State Department and Congress on immigration policy, human rights and economic sanctions issues.

Bondi also served as chair of the Center for Litigation and co-chair for the Center for Law and Justice at the America First Policy Institute, which was established as a think tank by former Trump administration staffers to lay the groundwork for his potential second term. In that role, she filed a brief in the Supreme Court supporting a public high school football coach who was fired for praying on the field after games.

Then came Bondi’s stint supporting Trump during his first impeachment as part of his defense team, brought on to bolster White House messaging and communications as Trump and his allies sought to delegitimize the impeachment.

She then echoed his allegations that the 2020 election was rife with fraud as he actively pursued to reverse the results, stirring up both a federal criminal case and one at the state level in Georgia. Bondi took an active role in campaigning for Trump post-election, notably in Pennsylvania, where she declared that she and the campaign team had proof of “cheating.”

The day following the election saw her in Philadelphia, fronting a news briefing with ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who later saw his legal practicing license revoked for continuing to claim electoral fraud.

Nonetheless, Bondi persisted with these assertions, taking to Fox & Friends to discuss the “evidence” she professed the campaign possessed. Come Wednesday, she’s expected to confront a wave of criticism for those very proclamations.

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