How Florida’s Former AG Turned Prosecution Into Pay-to-Play
I fell down a Pam Bondi rabbit hole today while researching if she had any connections to Epstein while she was the Attorney General of Florida - and while I could not find any direct connection between the two - what I did find was absolutely bonkers.
First, the timeline everyone’s screwing up: Bondi was Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019. Epstein’s sweetheart deal went down in 2008 under federal prosecutor Alex Acosta. So all these conspiracy nuts claiming she covered up Epstein crimes apparently never learned to count.
But what I uncovered instead makes Epstein look like amateur hour.
Picture this: September 2013. Bondi’s office is reviewing fraud complaints against Trump University. More than 20 people had asked her office for help getting refunds from Trump University and its affiliates - though her office says most of those came in before she took office. She personally asked Trump for $25,000 - and the check landed four days after her office said publicly it was looking at joining New York’s fraud case. After the check came in, her office passed on the case, saying there wasn’t enough to go on.
Plot twist - the donation was completely illegal. Charitable foundations can’t make political contributions. The IRS eventually fined Trump, forced him to reimburse the foundation, and by 2019 the entire Trump Foundation was shut down with Trump paying $2 million in damages. Trump University? Settled for $25 million - with New York’s attorney general and students in two California class actions - over the same fraud claims Bondi’s office passed on.
But wait - there’s more.
That same year, Bondi convinced Governor Rick Scott to postpone Marshall Lee Gore’s execution. Gore had murdered two women, raping one of them, and raped and tried to kill a third. His scheduled death date? September 10th. Problem? Bondi had a campaign fundraiser that night.
Then I found the foreclosure fraud cover-up. In 2011, Bondi fired two experienced attorneys investigating mortgage fraud following the robosigning crisis. Their target? Jacksonville-based Lender Processing Services. Their crime? LPS had donated to Bondi’s campaign and the attorneys were asking uncomfortable questions.
Both lawyers say they got the same ultimatum: resign or be terminated. Their expertise in mortgage fraud cases meant nothing once they started following the money that led back to Bondi’s donors.
Apparently, Bondi aggressively prosecuted fraud cases against institutions that didn’t pay her while giving free passes to those that opened their wallets. Her office wrapped up a probe of for-profit Keiser University with a compliance deal - but passed on joining the fraud case against Trump University.
And if campaign cash wasn’t enough, Bondi maintained cozy relationships with Scientology throughout her tenure. Prominent Scientologists threw her a fundraiser in Clearwater in 2014, and she spoke at the church’s Fort Harrison Hotel in 2016 - years after an FBI probe into the church’s treatment of its workers ended with no charges.
Then, in 2018, while still collecting her taxpayer funded salary as Florida’s AG, Bondi co-hosted Fox News’ “The Five” for three straight days. Fox News lied and said the Florida Commission on Ethics approved it. The commission had to issue a public statement denying they ever made such determination.
But none of that prepared me for the Qatar connection.
From 2019 to 2020, Bondi registered as a foreign agent lobbying for Qatar. Her firm’s contract? $115,000 per month. Her official mission? Helping Qatar with “anti-human trafficking efforts” for the 2022 World Cup.
Sure, Jan.
It’s insane that all of this is public knowledge and somehow she still ended up the AG for the US.
In May, Bondi signed off on the administration taking a $400 million luxury jet from the Qatari royal family - she concluded it was “legally permissible,” according to sources who spoke to ABC News. The same government she used to lobby for just handed her boss a flying palace worth 4,000 times more than the gold bars that sent Senator Bob Menendez to prison for 11 years.
During confirmation hearings, Senator Dick Durbin asked why she didn’t disclose her Qatar work as a conflict of interest. Bondi’s response? She was “very proud” of her Qatar lobbying and wished it had lasted longer.
America’s top law enforcement officer is publicly nostalgic about taking foreign money to help an authoritarian regime whitewash human rights abuses. And now she’s making legal decisions that benefit her former clients.
To complete the circle, one of Bondi’s first acts as AG was announcing reduced enforcement of foreign lobbying laws. Prosecuting other foreign lobbyists apparently feels awkward when you used to be one yourself.
This brings us full circle to her current Epstein disaster. As I’m sure you’ve heard, Bondi went on Fox News claiming she had Epstein’s “client list” sitting on her desk. She promised bombshells, teased massive revelations, got conspiracy theorists drooling over coming exposés.
Then she delivered recycled flight logs and redacted contact lists that had been public for years.
On Monday, the Justice Department released a memo saying there is no Epstein client list. The client list everyone thought she meant doesn’t exist, according to her own department - and the White House now says she meant the whole Epstein file.
But this isn’t incompetence - it’s brand consistency. Bondi has spent her entire career promising accountability while delivering access to the highest bidder. She promised to investigate fraud but only when politically convenient. She promised justice but pushed back an execution for a campaign fundraiser. She promised transparency on Epstein but delivered theater.
So while there is no smoking gun connecting Bondi to Epstein, there is a decades-long pattern of treating prosecutorial power like a personal piggy bank, complete with foreign government sponsorship and a $400 million conflict of interest flying overhead.
She’s not the Epstein cover-up the internet wants her to be - she’s something more ordinary, and to me, more worrying.
Correction, October 7th, 2026: This essay first ended by saying Bondi is covering up Epstein’s crimes and committing her own - no charge or finding supports that, and this essay itself found no connection between her and Epstein, so the ending has been cut back. It also said she ran Florida (she was its attorney general), that the Trump Foundation’s check arrived four days after she asked for it (it came four days after her office announced it might join New York’s case; she’d asked weeks earlier), that every other state attorney general pursued Trump University (the $25 million settled New York’s case and two class actions), that she went nuclear on Keiser University (her office closed a probe begun before her term with a compliance deal), that she spoke in Clearwater while the FBI was investigating Scientology (that probe ended years earlier with no charges), that she personally signed a memo on the Qatari jet last week (it was reported in May, from sources), and that she postponed executions for dinner parties (it was one execution and one campaign fundraiser).
Update, October 7th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so - the lawyers’ account of their ultimatum, the refund requests her office says mostly came in before her term, and the White House’s account of what Bondi meant by the client list.