Trump’s Attorney General Pick Had Qatar Lobbying Ties

On Novem­ber 23, 2024, Semafor report­ed that Pam Bon­di, Pres­i­dent-elect Trump’s new nom­i­nee for Attor­ney Gen­er­al, pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a $115,000-per-month lob­by­ist for Qatar. The arti­cle begins:

US Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s new pick for US attor­ney gen­er­al, Pam Bon­di, worked as a lob­by­ist on behalf of the gov­ern­ment of Qatar. Trump nom­i­nat­ed Bon­di, Flori­da’s first female attor­ney gen­er­al, to head the Jus­tice Depart­ment, short­ly after his first choice, for­mer Flori­da con­gress­man Matt Gaetz with­drew amid increas­ing scruti­ny over alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al assault and drug use. In July 2019, Bon­di, a part­ner in the DC office of the pow­er­ful lob­by­ing group Bal­lard Part­ners, was reg­is­tered through the firm to influ­ence Capi­tol Hill on human traf­fick­ing issues on behalf of the Gulf state for a fee of $115,000 per month.

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Key Points:

1. Bondi’s nom­i­na­tion comes after Matt Gaetz with­drew his can­di­da­cy fol­low­ing alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al assault and drug use.
2. Through Bal­lard Part­ners, Bon­di lob­bied for Qatar on human traf­fick­ing issues for $115,000 month­ly in 2019.
3. She tem­porar­i­ly left lob­by­ing to defend Trump dur­ing his first impeach­ment tri­al before return­ing to con­tin­ue Qatar work.
4. Her pre­vi­ous for­eign lob­by­ing work could raise con­flict of inter­est con­cerns dur­ing the con­fir­ma­tion process.