A recently unearthed interview featuring Pam Bondi, president-elect Donald Trump’s selection for U.S. Attorney General, showcases her support for deporting college students who protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Trump selected Bondi after his initial pick, former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, withdrew his nomination for Attorney General following allegations of sexual misconduct.
Bondi’s comments, which were rediscovered last week, run counter to the freedoms and protections outlined in the First Amendment, which apply to both citizens and temporary residents in the U.S.
“The thing that’s really the most troubling to me [are] these students in universities in our country, whether they’re here as Americans or if they’re here on student visas, and they’re out there saying ‘I support Hamas,'” Bondi, a staunch supporter of Israel, told Newsmax last year, as students across the country were demanding that universities divest from Israel’s indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Students who dared to exercise their speech and assembly rights to call for an end to the genocide should be punished, Bondi added.
“Frankly they need to be taken out of our country,” Bondi said, “or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away.”
Although Bondi’s comments contradict the Constitution, Trump will likely defend her statements if they come under scrutiny during her confirmation hearings, as he himself issued a call to deport student protesters during his presidential campaign.
“Any student that protests, I throw them out of the country,” Trump promised a group of donors in May.
Bondi, who previously served as Florida Attorney General, is considered far more qualified to run the Justice Department than Gaetz was. However, like Gaetz, her far right views indicate that she will likely use the department to go after Trump’s perceived political opponents.
In 2014, Bondi opposed marriage equality by using her office to argue against a lawsuit that sought to have Florida recognize same-sex marriages from other states. As state attorney general, Bondi tried to dismantle parts of the Affordable Care Act through lawsuits of her own, seeking to get federal courts to deem the law unconstitutional.
Bondi also took pro-Trump actions well before Trump ran for president: After initially deciding to join an investigation into Trump University in 2013, her office changed course days later, surreptitiously making the decision after a Trump charity donated $25,000 to her reelection campaign. In 2020, meanwhile, Bondi served on Trump’s legal team for his first impeachment trial, which dealt with the former president promising military aid to Ukraine if Ukrainian leaders agreed to find political dirt on Joe Biden. And she has also pushed Trump’s false claims that Biden only won the 2020 race due to widespread election fraud.
Notably, Bondi has repeatedly expressed a desire to go after Trump’s adversaries, advocating for those charging him with crimes to be charged themselves.
“The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Bondi said in a Fox News interview last year. “The investigators will be investigated.”
Critics have called for the Senate to hold robust hearings on Bondi’s nomination, with many saying her statements should disqualify her from leading the Department of Justice.
“Bondi must be asked at her confirmation hearing if Trump lost the election in 2020,” former federal prosecutor and current University of Alabama law professor Joyce Vance said on Bluesky. “Unless her answer is yes, the Senate must reject her nomination. You can’t be an election denier & the attorney general.”
“It’s not just that Bondi could use her authority to aid Trump or that he thinks she will. It’s that she already has,” Washington Post columnist Philip Bump pointed out.
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