November 6, 2019

Pam Bondi Dives Into the Swamp

Talk about a revolving door.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas (left), who was indicted last month for violating campaign finance laws, as well as Giuliani and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in November 2018 in South Daytona, Florida.Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press

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Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and more recently a lobbyist at a firm with extensive ties to President Donald Trump, will join the White House communications staff temporarily to help with messaging during the ongoing impeachment inquiry, according to reports Wednesday.

Talk about a revolving door.

In September 2013, the Donald J. Trump Foundation gave $25,000 to Bondi’s campaign for reelection as attorney general. A month later, Bondi announced that Florida would not join other states suing Trump for fraud over Trump University’s marketing of its seminars on real estate and management, even though many of Trump’s alleged victims lived in Florida. A Florida state prosecutor later said there was no evidence that the donation was illegal, but the incident has left Bondi dogged by allegations that she took a bribe from Trump.

But when Bondi left office, she didn’t exactly steer clear of ethical concerns. She joined Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm that touts its ties to Trump. Brian Ballard, the firm’s founder and a former lobbyist for Trump in Florida, launched the firm in 2017, capitalizing on Trump’s election. Starting last January, Bondi helped Ballard lobby the White House for clients including General Motors, Major League Baseball, and the Government of Qatar.

Bondi will work directly for Trump. That is a resume straight out of what Trump and his allies used to call the swamp.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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