Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has become something of a punchline during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in her role as the defense team’s Hunter Biden specialist.
Over the course of 10 hours of testimony on Wednesday, she only spoke once, but the halting and deliberate manner in which she pushed conspiracy theories aimed at shifting attention from Trump to the Biden family went viral and became the subject of a Daily Show video.
And on the following day, she was indignant about Hunter Biden having the nerve to go fishing with Joe Biden’s family.
But Pam Bondi turns out to be a curious expert on corruption.
As Florida Attorney General, in 2013 she was considering joining a lawsuit against Trump University for scamming students. Bondi never joined the lawsuit after accepting a $25,000 check from the Trump foundation.
While still AG in 2018, she served as a Fox co-host on The Five for three days, and then decided not to run for re-election.
As republicans have wrung their hands about Hunter Biden’s monthly earnings on the board of Burisma in Ukraine, Bondi’s firm was paid $115,000 a month for work she did for the Qatari government.
And as an expert on Trump’s legal team, she can’t get her facts straight.
To hire corrupt people to defend a corrupt president who proclaims to be concerned about the corruption of others, seems to laughably highlight the hypocrisy of the defense team.
So shamelessness is a feature of Trumpism, not a bug. And while Pam Bondi’s performance may seem laughable to most, it’s been sufficient for Senate Republicans — and as far as Trump’s fate during the impeachment trial is concerned, that’s good enough.
Find this article at Vox.
