Mike Benz, a former Trump State Department official and current executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to serve as U.S. Attorney General, given Bondi’s shortcomings while she served as Florida’s chief legal officer.
On Thursday afternoon, Trump announced his nomination of Bondi as attorney general just hours after the president-elect’s initial choice, former Florida U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz, withdrew his nomination.
Benz said Bondi’s lack of reputation as Florida Attorney General for fighting back against certain policies and Republican-focused issues concerns him.
“I don’t know how I feel about Pam Bondi. I’d like to be able to say that I simply trust Trump’s intuition on these things…but at the same time, I have to say that I have been consistently disappointed by the Florida Attorney General level action in response to all of the activism,” Benz explained on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Benz cited “bold” challenges brought by other states chief legal officers, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, that have targeted the Biden-Harris administration’s overreach, noting how the effort from Florida’s attorneys general office has been nearly nonexistent.
“All the rule of law justice pursuits by state attorneys general – Ken Paxton out of Texas has been unbelievably fantastic, he sued the State Department for the censorship operation, he sued Pfizer for false advertising about the efficacy of the COVID vaccine. Andrew Bailey from Missouri has pursued censorship lawsuits in a totally aggressive and passionate and totally necessary way. Same with Louisiana, same with even to some extent Tennessee, and I’ve seen almost nothing come out of the Florida Attorney General level that has actually pursued a bold case in furtherance of freedom of speech or civil liberties or taking on the malfeasance of the Biden DOJ,” Benz said.
Benz said he is specifically concerned that Bondi, when faced with the task, would fail to address issues surrounding the censorship industry and the January 6 cases.
“My initial sense is cautiously optimistic. I think it’s important to support Trump until there are signs that it’s a mistake, but I don’t have the enthusiasm level about the present Justice Department that I did,” Benz explained.
“It’s hard for me to imagine, for example, someone coming from the Florida State AG, given what I just laid out, that would take on the residual issues around January 6th, the residual issues around the censorship industry, because there were so many opportunities to do that from Florida that were simply not taken up,” Benz added.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Pam Bondi and Donald Trump” by Pam Bondi.
