Pam Bondi took the oath of office to become U.S. attorney general on Wednesday, pledging to “restore integrity” to the Justice Department.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was sworn in to lead the Justice Department on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025 where the nation’s top prosecutor is expected to spend her first days dealing with a firestorm of reassignments, lawsuits and resignations from senior law enforcement officials, despite early efforts to urge calm and head off any fears of politicization.
Bondi was sworn in at the Oval Office by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in front of an audience packed with her friends and family.
President Donald Trump, for his part, praised Bondi after the ceremony as “unbelievably fair and unbelievably good,” and someone who he said will “restore fair and impartial justice” at the department.
“I know I’m supposed to say, ‘She’s going to be totally impartial with respect to Democrats,'” Trump told reporters, “and I think she will be as impartial as a person can be.”
Her nomination had earned the praise of more than 110 former senior Justice Department officials, including former attorneys general and dozens of Democratic and Republican state attorneys general, who praised her experience and work across party and state lines.
Her swearing-in comes hours after two groups of FBI agents filed separate lawsuits Tuesday seeking to block any public identification of employees who worked on Jan. 6 investigations, after the bureau complied with a request from Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to obtain information from thousands of agents, or their supervisors, detailing their role in the investigation.
Questions ranged from agents’ participation in any grand jury subpoenas, whether the agents worked or responded to leads from another FBI field office, or if they worked as a case agent for investigations.
The plaintiffs said any effort to review or discriminate against FBI employees involved in the Jan. 6 investigations would be “unlawful and retaliatory,” and a violation of civil service protections under federal law.
Bondi, a former Florida prosecutor and state attorney general, vowed repeatedly in her confirmation hearing last month to head up a Justice Department free from political influence or weaponization.
If confirmed, she told lawmakers last month, the “partisanship, the weaponization” at the Justice Department “will be gone.”
“America will have one tier of justice for all,” she said.
