Democratic Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has torn into President-elect Donald Trump’s new attorney general nominee for being a “lackey.”
“This is someone who is clearly a Trump apologist, a Trump lackey,” said Wasserman Schultz told Jake Tapper on Friday during CNN’s The Lead. “That’s what he wants as AG.”
Admitting to a small degree of relief at Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal from Trump’s “chaos cabinet,” a Wasserman Schultz said at least Bondi “does have the requisite experience,” as the Sunshine State’s former attorney general of eight years. “But she comes with the heaviness of having been a massive election denier,” she added.
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“You know, she did some good things for consumer protection, did some pretty good lawsuits that brought resources back for people who’d been wronged in the state of Florida,” said Wasserman Schultz. “So we’ll see how the Senate looks at it, but it’s a heck of a lot better than Matt Gaetz.”
Not a particularly high bar given that Gaetz dropped his bid for top prosecutor’s spot this week amid an unmitigated political firestorm prompted by an unreleased House Ethics Committee report.
Having served on Trump’s transition team ahead of his first presidency, Bondi has already once been considered for attorney general following the ouster of Jeff Sessions in 2018, though the role eventually went to Bill Barr instead.
She was nevertheless later instrumental in Trump’s defense during his first impeachment trial for obstructing congressional investigations two years later, as well as pushing still-unproven Republican allegations of President Joe Biden’s involvement in a corruption scheme with his son, Hunter.
Wasserman Schultz also noted that Bondi was Florida’s attorney general when she nearly joined a 2013 lawsuit against Trump University for fraud. The lawsuit was brought forth by New York’s attorney general, but Bondi ultimately chose not to pursue the action after receiving $25,000 from a charitable foundation run by the Trump family, reported the New York Times.
