Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, who came under scrutiny last year for her office’s dealings with Trump University and President-elect Donald Trump, will take a job in Trump’s White House, according to a person familiar with the decision.
It was not immediately clear what her title would be. Bondi was not among a lengthy list of White House appointments Trump announced on Wednesday.
A Washington watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service last year charging that Trump’s charitable foundation violated its tax-exempt status by making a $25,000 donation to a political group associated with Bondi in 2013. Bondi later decided not to pursue claims by Florida residents that Trump University had defrauded them.
Trump’s foundation paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS last year for the donation to the Bondi-connected group. At the time of its complaint CREW’s board was led by David Brock, who ran two super-PACs backing Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s general election opponent.
A Bondi spokeswoman said the office had received only one complaint against the university at the time of the donation and referred it to the office of the attorney general in New York, which was pursuing its own case against Trump University. Trump said in September that he “never spoke to” Bondi about the donation.
The Associated Press reported in June that complaints against Trump University actually numbered in the dozens, and that Bondi had personally solicited the donation from Trump weeks before she learned of the complaints. Her office decided not to pursue a case after the donation was received, the AP reported.
Trump also hosted a fundraiser for Bondi in March 2014 at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, and was endorsed by Bondi shortly before Florida’s Republican primary election last March.
Bondi “has been a very trusted confidante and supporter of the president-elect,” Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said on a conference call with reporters on Thursday. “I don’t want to get ahead of any decisions or any announcements that may or may not come but she has been a very important person both in terms of the campaign and the transition and is a very valued opinion in the president elect’s world right now.”
Bondi declined to say at an appearance in Tampa on Thursday morning whether she was considering a job with Trump. “I’m very happy being attorney general. I’d never discuss anything confidential,” she said, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
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