U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was sworn in to lead the Justice Department on Wednesday, where the nation’s newly minted top prosecutor is expected to spend her first days dealing with a firestorm of reassignments, lawsuits and resignations from senior law enforcement officials, despite early efforts to urge calm and head off any fears of politicization.
Bondi was sworn in at the Oval Office Wednesday by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in front of an audience packed with her friends and family.
President Donald Trump, for his part, praised Bondi after the ceremony as ‘unbelievably fair and unbelievably good,’ and someone who he said will ‘restore fair and impartial justice’ at the department.
‘I know I’m supposed to say, ‘She’s going to be totally impartial with respect to Democrats,” Trump told reporters, ‘and I think she will be as impartial as a person can be.’
Bondi’s nomination had earned praise both from Republicans and some Democrats for her composure and her ability to deftly navigate thorny and politically tricky topics and lines of questioning from some would-be detractors – putting her on a glide path to confirmation in the Republican-majority chamber.
Her nomination had also earned the praise of more than 110 former senior Justice Department officials, including former attorneys general and dozens of Democratic and Republican state attorneys general, who praised her experience and work across party and state lines.
Still, her swearing-in comes at a politically charged time for law enforcement agency. Just hours earlier, two groups of FBI agents filed separate lawsuits Tuesday seeking to block any public identification of employees who worked on Jan. 6 investigations, after the bureau complied with a request from Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to obtain information from thousands of agents, or their supervisors, detailing their role in the sprawling investigation.
Questions ranged from agents’ participation in any grand jury subpoenas, whether the agents worked or responded to leads from another FBI field office, or if they worked as a case agent for investigations.
The plaintiffs said any effort to review or discriminate against FBI employees involved in the Jan. 6 investigations would be ‘unlawful and retaliatory,’ and a violation of civil service protections under federal law.
Bondi, a former Florida prosecutor and state attorney general, vowed repeatedly in her confirmation hearing last month to head up a Justice Department free from political influence or weaponization.
If confirmed, she told lawmakers last month, the ‘partisanship, the weaponization’ at the Justice Department ‘will be gone.’
‘America will have one tier of justice for all,’ she said.
Still, her work will be cut out for her.
Earlier Wednesday, a senior FBI official also emailed employees at the bureau seeking to head off concerns that they could be terminated or discriminated against in response to their role in the investigation.
‘Let me be clear: No FBI employee who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner with respect to January 6 investigations is at risk of termination or other penalties,’ this person said in an email shared across the FBI, and confirmed to Fox News.
Trump declined to answer questions earlier this week over whether his administration would remove FBI employees involved in the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, telling reporters only that he believes the bureau is ‘corrupt’ and that his nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, will ‘straighten it out.’
And former Justice Department officials have cited concerns that the actions could have an incredibly chilling effect on the work of the FBI, including its more than 52 separate field offices, whose agents have decades of experience in detecting and responding to counterterrorism threats, organized and violent crime, drug trafficking, and more.
But one retired FBI agent urged calm, noting to Fox News that the acting director and deputy director of the FBI still remain in place. This person also stressed that the Jan. 6 investigation and the FBI personnel involved in investigating each case ‘fully followed Bureau and DOJ guidelines,’ and that violations of federal statutes were ‘proven beyond a reasonable doubt in federal courts of law.’