The Attorney General Who Won't Say No

"By the time she faced her first oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Pam Bondi had become a person she never really wanted to be. She had told a reporter once that in college she'd wanted to be a pediatrician, but she ended up becoming a lawyer. She'd said that she wasn't sure she wanted to actually practice law, but she became a prosecutor."

"But here she was in a Senate hearing room in October, a person who had once seemed so mild, so warm, so kindhearted that she'd earned the nickname "Pambi," opening up a folder full of slap-downs, each tailored to a Democratic committee member, with notes on how to deliver them. "I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump," she told Senator Dick Durbin, who'd asked about the rationale for sending federal troops to his state."

Pam Bondi wanted to be a pediatrician in college but became a lawyer, then a prosecutor, and twice won campaigns for Florida attorney general. She resisted becoming U.S. attorney general and preferred to be ambassador to Italy. By October, she appeared combative at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, preparing tailored rebuttals and insults for Democratic members. She challenged Senator Dick Durbin over federal troop deployment, accused Senator Richard Blumenthal of lying about military service while dodging questions about an antitrust case, attacked Senator Sheldon Whitehouse with accusations linking Reid Hoffman to Jeffrey Epstein, and told others they would have been fired.

Read at The Atlantic