What to know about Pam Bondi, Trump's new pick for attorney general

NEW YORK (AP) — Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, was chosen Thursday by Donald Trump to serve as U.S. attorney general hours after his first choice, Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration after a federal sex trafficking investigation and ethics probe made his ability to be confirmed dubious.

The 59-year-old has long been in Trump's orbit and her name had been floated during his first term as a potential candidate for the nation's highest law enforcement role.

If confirmed by the Republican-led Senate, Bondi would instantly become one of the most closely watched members of Trump’s Cabinet given the Republican’s threat to pursue retribution against perceived adversaries and concern among Democrats that he will look to bend the Justice Department to his will.

Here's a few things to know about Bondi:

Bondi has been a longtime and early ally. In March 2016, on the eve of the Republican primary in Florida, Bondi endorsed Trump at a rally, picking him over the candidate from her own state, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

She gained national attention with appearances on Fox News as a defender of Trump and had a notable speaking spot at 2016 Republican National Convention as Trump became the party's surprising nominee. During the remarks, some in the crowd began chanting "Lock her up" about Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Bondi responded by saying, “‘Lock her up,’ I love that."

As Trump prepared to move into the White House, she served on his first transition team.

When Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was ousted in 2018, Bondi’s name was floated as a possible candidate for the job. Trump at the time said he would “love” Bondi to join the administration. He ultimately selected William Barr instead.

She kept a toehold in Trump's orbit thereafter, including after he left office. She served as a chairwoman of America First Policy Institute, a think tank set up by former Trump administration staffers to lay the groundwork if he won a second term.

Bondi made history in 2010 when she was elected as Florida’s first female attorney general. Though the Tampa native spent more than 18 years as a prosecutor in the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office, she was a political unknown when she held the state’s top law enforcement job.

Bondi was elevated in the primary after she was endorsed by former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

She campaigned on a message to use the state’s top legal office in a robust way, challenging then-President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. She also called for her state to adopt Arizona’s “show me your papers” immigration law that sparked national debate.

As Florida’s top prosecutor, Bondi stressed human trafficking issues and urged tightening state laws against traffickers. She held the job from 2011 to 2019.

Bondi worked as a lobbyist for Ballard Partners, the powerful Florida-based firm where Trump’s campaign chief and incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles was a partner. Her U.S. clients have included General Motors, the commissioner of Major League Baseball and a Christian anti-human-trafficking advocacy group.

She also lobbied for a Kuwaiti firm, according to Justice Department foreign agent filings and congressional lobbying documents. She registered as a foreign agent for the government of Qatar; her work was related to anti-human-trafficking efforts leading up to the World Cup, held in 2022.

Bondi also represented the KGL Investment Company KSCC, a Kuwaiti firm also known as KGLI, lobbying the White House, National Security Council, State Department and Congress on immigration policy, human rights and economic sanctions issues.

Bondi stepped away from lobbying to serve on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020.

He was accused — but not convicted — of abuse of power for allegedly pressuring the president of Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals while crucial U.S. security aid was being withheld. He was also charged with obstruction of Congress for stonewalling investigative efforts.

Trump wanted Ukraine’s president to publicly commit to investigating Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. He pushed for the investigation while holding up nearly $400 million in military aid.

Bondi was brought on to bolster the White House’s messaging and communications. Trump and his allies sought to delegitimize the impeachment from the start, aiming to brush off the whole thing as a farce.

Bondi has been a vocal critic of the criminal cases against Trump as well as Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Trump in two federal cases. In one radio appearance, she blasted Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump as “horrible” people she said were trying to make names for themselves by “going after Donald Trump and weaponizing our legal system.”

It’s unlikely that Bondi would be confirmed in time to overlap with Smith, who brought two federal indictments against Trump that are both expected to wind down before the incoming president takes office. Special counsels are expected to produce reports on their work that historically are made public, but it remains unclear when such a document might be released.

Bondi was also among a group of Republicans who showed up to support Trump at his hush money criminal trial in New York that ended in May with a conviction on 34 felony counts.

As president, Trump demanded investigations into political opponents like Hillary Clinton and sought to use the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to advance his own interests, including in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Bondi appears likely to oblige him.

She would inherit a Justice Department expected to pivot sharply on civil rights, corporate enforcement and the prosecutions of hundreds of Trump supporters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol — defendants whom Trump has pledged to pardon.

Bondi issued a public apology in 2013 while serving as attorney general after she sought to delay the execution of a convicted killer because it conflicted with a fundraiser for her reelection campaign.

The attorney general, representing the state in death row appeals, typically remains available on the date of execution cases in case of any last-minute legal issues.

Bondi later said she was wrong and sorry for requesting then-Gov. Rick Scott push back the execution of Marshall Lee Gore by three weeks.

Bondi personally solicited a 2013 political contribution from Trump as her office was weighing whether to join New York in suing over fraud allegations involving Trump University.

Trump cut a $25,000 check to a political committee supporting Bondi from his family’s charitable foundation, in violation of legal prohibitions against charities supporting partisan political activities. After the check came in, Bondi’s office nixed suing Trump’s company for fraud, citing insufficient grounds to proceed. Both Trump and Bondi denied wrongdoing.

Two days before being sworn in as president in January 2017, Trump paid $25 million to settle three lawsuits alleging Trump University defrauded its students.

Trump also paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS over the illegal political donation to support Bondi from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which he was forced to dissolve amid an investigation by the state of New York.

A Florida prosecutor assigned by then-GOP Gov. Rick Scott later determined there was insufficient evidence to support bribery charges against Trump and Bondi over the $25,000 donation.

Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker contributed to this report.

FILE - Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at First Horizon Coliseum, Nov. 2, 2024, in Greensboro, NC. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama inmate convicted in the 1994 killing of a female hitchhiker cursed at the prison warden and made obscene gestures with his hands shortly before he was put to death Thursday evening in the nation’s third execution using nitrogen gas.

Carey Dale Grayson, 50, was executed at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southern Alabama. He was one of four teens convicted of killing Vickie Deblieux, 37, as she hitchhiked through Alabama on the way to her mother’s home in Louisiana. The woman was attacked, beaten and thrown off a cliff.

Alabama began using nitrogen gas earlier this year to carry out some executions. The method involves placing a respirator gas mask over the face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen.

Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm said the gas flowed for 15 minutes and an electrocardiogram showed Grayson no longer had a heartbeat about 10 minutes after the gas began flowing.

Like two inmates previously executed by nitrogen, Grayson shook at times before taking a periodic series of gasping breaths. The victim's daughter told reporters afterward that her mother had her future stolen from her. But she also spoke out against the decision to execute Grayson and “murdering inmates under the guise of justice.”

The curtains to the execution room were opened at about 6:06 p.m. Strapped to a gurney with a blue-rimmed gas mask on his face, Grayson responded with an obscenity when the warden asked if he had any final words. The warden turned off the microphone. Grayson appeared to speak toward the witness room where state officials were present, but his words could not be heard. He raised both middle fingers at the start of the execution.

It was unclear when the gas began flowing. Grayson shook and pulled against the gurney restraints. He clenched his fist and appeared to struggle to try to gesture again. His sheet-wrapped legs lifted off the gurney into the air at about 6:14 p.m. He took a periodic series of more than a dozen gasping breaths for several minutes, appeared to stop breathing at 6:21 p.m, and then the curtains to the viewing room were closed at 6:27 p.m.

Grayson was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m.

Deblieux’s mutilated body was found at the bottom of a bluff near Odenville, Alabama, on Feb. 26, 1994. She was hitchhiking from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to her mother’s home in West Monroe, Louisiana, when the four teens offered her a ride. Prosecutors said the teens took her to a wooded area and attacked and beat her. They threw her off a cliff and later returned to mutilate her body.

A medical examiner testified that Deblieux’s face was so fractured that she was identified by an earlier X-ray of her spine. Investigators said the teens were identified as suspects after one of them showed a friend one of Deblieux’s severed fingers and boasted about the killing.

DeBlieux’s daughter, who was 12 when her mother was killed, said her mother had her future opportunities and future stolen from her. But she criticized the decision to execute the inmate.

"She was unique. She was spontaneous. She was wild. She was funny. She was gorgeous to boot,” Jodi Haley said of her mother.

But she said Grayson was abused in every possible way as a child but “society failed this man as a child, and my family suffered because of it.”

“Murdering inmates under the guise of justice needs to stop,” she said, adding that "no one should have the right to take a person's possibilities, days, and life."

Gov. Kay Ivey said afterward she was praying for the victim's loved ones to find closure and healing.

“Some thirty years ago, Vicki DeBlieux’s journey to her mother’s house and ultimately, her life, were horrifically cut short because of Carey Grayson and three other men. She sensed something was wrong, attempted to escape, but instead, was brutally tortured and murdered," Ivey said in a statement.

Grayson's crimes "were heinous, unimaginable, without an ounce of regard for human life and just unexplainably mean. An execution by nitrogen hypoxia (bears) no comparison to the death and dismemberment Ms. DeBlieux experienced,” she added.

Grayson was the only one of the four teens who faced a death sentence since the other teens were under 18 at the time of the killing. Grayson was 19.

The execution was carried out hours after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Grayson’s request for a stay. His final appeals had focused on a call for more scrutiny of the nitrogen gas method. His lawyers argued the execution method causes “conscious suffocation” and that the first two nitrogen executions did not result in swift unconsciousness and death as the state had promised.

Hamm said the movements exhibited by Grayson and other inmates were expected involuntary movements, including the breathing at the end.

No state other than Alabama has used nitrogen hypoxia to carry out a death sentence. In 2018, Alabama became the third state — along with Oklahoma and Mississippi — to authorize the use of nitrogen gas to execute prisoners.

A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest outside the Capitol in Montgomery, Ala., on Monday, Nov. 18, 2024, against a scheduled execution in Alabama using nitrogen gas. (Kim Chandler/Associated Press)

Abe Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action leads a outside the Capitol in Montgomery, Ala., on Monday, Nov. 18, 2024, against a scheduled execution in Alabama using nitrogen gas. (Kim Chandler/Associated Press)