Pam Bondi seems like a relatively safe pair of hands

PAM BONDIFBI did not kidnap a dog, exactly. But the 20-year-old custody battle, fought over a St Bernard named Noah (né Master Tank), did not look great for America’s probable next attorney-general. In 2005, during Hurricane Katrina, the dog was separated from its family in Louisiana. Ms Bondi, then a Florida prosecutor, adopted the mutt from a charity that rescued him. When Noah’s original family found him in 2006, she refused to part with him until a 16-month legal fight forced her hand. She had suggested that the dog had previously been neglected. The story attracted local attention when Ms Bondi ran to be Florida’s attorney-general. She lost the dog, but won the election and served for eight years.When it comes to Donald Trump’s picks for his administration, a canine custody battle is unlikely to raise eyebrows. Consider the competition: the prospective homeland-security secretary, Kristi Noem, once shot her dog, then bragged about it in a book. On January 15th, as senators questioned Ms Bondi, it was clear that she faced a relatively smooth path to confirmation. Unlike some of her fellow cabinet nominees, the 59-year-old does not profess any bizarre ideology or seem to give the benefit of the doubt. Democrats instead worry about her long-standing loyalty to Mr Trump and her cosy relationships with corporate interests. “At issue,” said Dick Durbin, one Democratic senator, “is your ability to say no.”Ms Bondi’s rise has brought her far from Temple Terrace, the city where she grew up on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Her father, a teacher, was the mayor. While an undergraduate at the University of Florida she considered becoming a paediatrician. But she went to law school, and an internship at the state prosecutor’s office in Tampa sealed the deal.She had a successful 18-year career there, winning convictions in some high-profile murder cases and doing part-time commentary on Fox News. Sarah Palin, a one-time vice-presidential candidate and then a conservative star, endorsed her for state attorney-general, which helped propel the relative unknown to victory. In that job she promised to continue her predecessor’s work fighting the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s signature health-care legislation (the effort largely failed). She also took on less partisan work, like shutting down “pill mills”, unscrupulous drug-dispensing clinics that were once commonplace in the state.But questions about her independence began to swirl. In 2014 the wrote about the growing business of lobbying state attorneys-general. Fundraising groups, supported by corporate sponsors, had sprung up to benefit the campaigns of Republican and Democratic prosecutors. Dinners and resort weekends (all expenses paid) brought together donors, lobbyists and attorneys-general. Ms Bondi, the ’s reporting showed, received almost $25,000-worth of perks from a Republican group between 2012 and 2014. She dropped or declined to join lawsuits against companies such as Travelocity, a travel-reservations site accused of tax offences, that wined and dined her. (At the time Ms Bondi denied that any “access” by lobbyists affected her office’s decisions; similar lawsuits against Travelocity failed in other states.)Of particular relevance now are her dealings with Trump University. By 2013 Mr Trump’s for-profit college, which he promised would “teach you better than the best business school”, had been under scrutiny for years. Ms Bondi’s predecessor had received more than 20 complaints from Floridian students claiming they were not taught anything; she received one, too. Florida was Trump University’s third-biggest market by sales. That August the New York attorney-general sued Trump University for fraud. In September Mr Trump’s foundation sent a $25,000 check to Ms Bondi’s re-election campaign. In mid-October her office announced it would not be pursuing complaints. Mr Trump and Ms Bondi deny that the donation influenced any decision-making, and Mr Trump later paid back the $25,000 to his foundation, which as a non-profit organisation cannot donate to political entities, plus a fine.During the 2016 Republican primary, Ms Bondi became one of the first Republicans to back Mr Trump. She was an adviser during his presidential transition in 2016; defended him during his first impeachment, in 2019; and joined a lobbying firm run by one of his top fundraisers after she left office. Her devotion to the president-elect is clear, if less colourful than, say, Kash Patel’s.Mr Patel, the man Mr Trump has picked to run the , wrote a children’s book, styling himself as a wizard who saves the honourable King Donald from the evil Hillary Queenton. His name came up frequently during Ms Bondi’s Senate hearing. Would Ms Bondi, who would be Mr Patel’s boss, allow him to go after the “Deep State” enemies he has reportedly compiled? “There will never be an ‘enemies list’ within the Department of Justice,” she insisted.Ms Bondi has views that Democrats do not like. She has refused to say that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, and called the criminal charges filed against Mr Trump “diabolical”. But they will save their loudest objections for Mr Trump’s other picks; some might even vote to confirm her. “The people of America”, not the president, “would be my client,” she insisted. When swearing an oath to give truthful answers during the hearing, she told senators that the last four words were the most important: “So help me God.”