Trump will survive but Pam Bondi may be toast for donation scandal

 


Last week, Pam Bondi tried to make her three-year-long run of bad press come to an end.

It did not.

That's partly because, when Florida's attorney general finally had a press conference to explain why she took $25,000 in campaign cash from someone she had been asked to investigate, her excuses sounded incredibly lame.

And unbelievable.

She asked people to believe that, when a committee supporting her campaign took $25,000 from Donald Trump on Sept. 17, 2013, she had no idea that her office had been asked to investigate him.
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Even though a week earlier, her spokeswoman had told media that Bondi's office was "reviewing" complaints against Trump.

And even though, two weeks before that, email records show that Bondi's top staffers – at least nine of them, including her chief of staff and deputy attorney general — had been discussing the matter in a string of emails labeled "Press Inquiry from 8/29/13 - Trump."

No, Bondi claimed last week that the first she learned about all this Trump business was when she read my column nearly two months later in October.

When you're claiming a newspaper columnist knows more about what's going on in your office than you do, you have a problem.
State attorney asks Scott for help in Trump-Bondi donation complaint
State attorney asks Scott for help in Trump-Bondi donation complaint

But Bondi's biggest problem may be the fallout on her political career.

You see, Trump has defenders galore. TV talk shows are full of pundits saying Trump did nothing wrong. It doesn't really matter whether you agree. He has plenty of people giving him cover. (Trump himself said he could "shoot somebody" and not lose votes.)

Bondi doesn't have that. She doesn't have gobs of fellow prosecutors saying it's standard operating procedure to take money from people they have been asked to probe.

She doesn't have attorneys general lining up to say: "Oh, yeah, I take money from potential investigatory targets all the time."

And there's a reason for that ... because it's wrong. And everyone knows it.

The issue isn't complicated. If your mother was stabbed, and you gave the suspect's name to a prosecutor's office, you'd be horrified if the prosecutor then took $25,000 from the suspect and ignored the case.

It wouldn't matter if the prosecutor later claimed she didn't know the details.

Bondi can plead ignorance all she wants. But until she does the right thing – admit she did wrong, give the money back and request an independent investigator to probe the complaints of all the Floridians she ignored – her bad press will continue.

She seems unwilling to do so, which is why she has few defenders.

In some regards, Bondi's political trajectory is reminiscent of former Secretary of State Katherine Harris – another one-time rising Republican star loved by the party ... until she got caught up in scandal.

Back in 2000, when Harris made headlines for co-chairing George W. Bush's Florida campaign while also vowing to be a neutral elections chief, she had lots of Republicans offering encouragement in private. But public support soon faded.

By the time Harris' political career limped to an end, she was staging campaign rallies in empty airport hangars. During a campaign stop in Orlando, Harris had announced nine Republican members of Congress as event hosts. Zero showed up. Nobody wanted her stink on them.

See, Trump had a national reputation before DonationGate struck. Bondi did not. This was her introduction to America – as a woman who thinks it's fine to take money from people she has been asked to investigate.

And let's be clear: It takes an amazing suspension of belief to buy Bondi's argument that she didn't know.

In that staff email exchange back from August 29, 2013, one of Bondi's chief investigators noted that questions about Trump University were "getting a lot of national coverage in the media."

Another email – sent to Bondi's personal Yahoo account on Sept. 20 – contained a newspaper story in which Bondi's own office said it was "reviewing" the case against Trump.

Yet Bondi now claims she knew nothing until my column ran on Oct. 16.

An incredulous reporter from the Associated Press seized on that detail at last week's press conference, asking her: "It took two months before this rose to your attention?"

Bondi's response: "Absolutely."

It's understandable that few people want to rally behind that.