By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As he sought to overturn his 2020 election loss, Donald Trump considered firing the leadership of the Justice Department and installing a loyalist who would echo his false claims of fraud.
As he prepares to return to the White House, Trump is pushing to install an attorney general who supported him in that effort.
Pam Bondi, Trump's pick for attorney general, said Trump had won the battleground state of Pennsylvania as votes were still being counted, and implied fraud was taking place.
"We do have evidence of cheating," Bondi said on Fox News on Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, citing ballots allegedly being "dumped" and mailed to dead people.
"We are not going anywhere until they declare that we won Pennsylvania," she said.
Trump would go on to lose the state, and the election. No evidence has emerged to support his claims of widespread fraud.
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as the nation's top law enforcement officer, Bondi, 59, would oversee the Justice Department's efforts to combat election fraud, campaign finance violations, public corruption and to protect Americans' voting rights.
Some former prosecutors question whether she would be willing to push back if Trump asks her to launch investigations based on flimsy claims.
"I think being an election denier should be disqualifying for anyone to be attorney general," said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor.
Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Both Trump's former Attorney General Bill Barr and his deputy, Jeffrey Rosen, refused his demands to pursue voter fraud investigations in 2020.
Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department lawyer, later tried to convince Trump to appoint him as acting attorney general to launch voter fraud probes. Trump declined to do so after other senior department leaders threatened to resign in protest.
VOCAL DEFENDER OF TRUMP
Bondi has not faced any legal repercussions for her involvement in the effort to advance Trump's false narrative of a stolen election, unlike others who have faced prosecution or disbarment, and her name only came up once in the 845-page report by the Democratic-led U.S. House congressional committee that investigated the scheme.
Since serving as Florida attorney general from 2011-2019, she has emerged as one of Trump's most vocal defenders.
She was a member of Trump's legal team during his first impeachment trial, when he stood accused of threatening to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless it agreed to launch a corruption probe into Trump's Democratic rival, now President Joe Biden.
Bondi is a partner at Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with close ties to Trump that once also employed his new incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles.
She also leads the litigation arm of the America First Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank that has filed legal briefs to defend Trump in several of the criminal cases filed against him, including one which claimed that Special Counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed.
In 2013, she declined to join forces with New York to investigate Trump's for-profit college Trump University after a political action committee supporting her re-election received a $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation.
She later denied any connection between the donation and her decision not to pursue Trump University.
Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor at the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section who now serves as president of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Bondi will need to show that her history of advocacy for Trump will not influence how she leads the department.
"She is someone who comes in potentially thinking of her role as advocating for Donald Trump. That's not what the attorney general of the United States does," he said. "She does have a burden to show the Senate and to show the people that she understands that."
Despite Bondi's long history of supporting Trump, some of those familiar with her time as Florida attorney general say she has also been known to reach across the aisle and work alongside political rivals.
In 2011, for instance, Bondi tapped Democrat Dave Aronberg to serve as the state's drug czar to help prosecute prescription drug trafficking. She tapped him after he lost in his primary bid for her job as attorney general.
Her work going after illegal pill mills is considered one of her signature achievements as attorney general, in addition to her work combating human trafficking.
"She certainly has the law and order background," said Bill Shepherd, an attorney at Holland & Knight who once served as Florida's top prosecutor before Bondi became attorney general.