In today’s swamp-draining news, Bloomberg News is reporting that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has accepted a role in the Trump administration. The exact nature of her new job remains to be seen.
Bondi was a dogged Trump loyalist throughout the 2016 presidential election, but their political ties go back well before that. In 2013, a political group supporting Bondi’s re-election bid received an illegal $25,000 contribution from Trump’s charity, the Trump Foundation. The check arrived three days after Bondi announced she was weighing an investigation of Trump University, a Trump-owned online training program accused of defrauding its students. Bondi never launched an inquiry into the now-defunct company, but in November Trump inked a $25 million settlement in a separate case regarding the allegations.
Under federal law, tax-exempt charities such as the Trump Foundation are not allowed to support political candidates. The foundation admitted error in March and described the donation as the result of a clerical mistake. The $25,000 was actually supposed to come from Trump’s personal checkbook, they said.
The Trump Foundation paid the Internal Revenue Service a $2,500 penalty fee for the wrongful donation in September.