The U.S. Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as the new attorney general this week in a 54-46 vote.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, in one of her first acts in office, directed officials on Feb. 5 to review the prosecution of President Donald Trump, as well as the prosecutions of people allegedly involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.
Shortly after being sworn into office, Bondi established in a memorandum what she called a Weaponization Working Group. She said the working group would examine what she described as the weaponization of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which she now leads, by former special counsel Jack Smith and his team as they investigated and later brought charges against Trump.
Smith stepped down before Trump became president. The DOJ, under acting control, recently fired members of his team.
The group will review actions taken during the previous administration that appear to have been “designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice or legitimate governmental objectives,” Bondi wrote.
The group’s review will cover how state and local officials cooperated with Smith’s team, “improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions” related to the Jan. 6 prosecutions, the prosecutions of people charged for protesting at or near abortion clinics, and retaliation against whistleblowers, according to the memo.
Bondi quoted Trump, who in a Jan. 20 executive order said that the “prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process.”
The order said it is U.S. policy to identify and take action to correct past misconduct by the federal government related to the weaponization of law enforcement and the intelligence community and directed the attorney general to review the activities of all departments that exercise civil or criminal enforcement authority, including the DOJ, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission.
“The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end,” Trump said in his inaugural address on Jan. 20.
