The Attorney General of the United States is a member of the Florida Bar. She also appears to be someone about whom real, substantial questions can be raised about her honesty given a recent television appearance.
Many years ago, Kelly Conway, acting as a Presidential advisor, went on television, spewed a fairly obvious lie and was subjected to a disciplinary complaint about it. I was quoted way back then in a media article as saying she shouldn’t be subject to discipline, even under RPC 8.4(c), because she was quite obviously acting other than in her capacity as a lawyer and engaged (for better or worse) in political speech that ought to be protected by the First Amendment in those circumstances.
Pam Bondi, however, is serving as the Attorney General of the United States and is not supposed to have any political role. She is instead supposed to always be serving in her role as an attorney for the United States.
Last Sunday, March 23, 2025, Ms. Bondi was a guest on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures program and had the following exchange with the host:
BARTIROMO: Well, it’s just extraordinary to me that you have got this resistance coming back. We saw the resistance in President Trump’s first term.
But then, after that massive win in November, where he won the popular vote and all the swing states, and yet now the judicial part of the branches are getting involved. Are you surprised by these judges, not just Boasberg? We have got three others complaining about no men in women’s sports and the DOGE cuts.
Broadly speaking, give us a sense of how you’re looking at all of this resistance.
BONDI: Oh, broadly speaking, we are fighting back every step of the way. We are in court every day fighting against these activist judges. We’re not going to stop.
Many of them should be recused from these cases. They will be recused from these cases. We’re appealing them. Look at Chutkan. Look at Judge Chutkan with the EPA trying to control our money, Judge Chang trying to control the money of the USAID.
Judge Reyes, look what she did to Pete Hegseth. She made personal attacks in court about Pete Hegseth. And she’s trying to control military readiness. You can’t do this, and then, of course, Boasberg trying to control our foreign policy. These judges are out of control. We are going to fight back and we are going to win.
And the Supreme Court will be ready to hear these cases. Again, these are federal district judges who are trying to control our nation’s agenda. And, yes, President Trump won the popular vote by an overwhelming majority.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
BONDI: He won the Electoral College. And the people of America want change. And these judges, just they — they are losing. And they realize that. And we are going to win.
This statement by Ms. Bondi that “Trump won the popular vote by an overwhelming majority,” is easily proven false no matter how you evaluate it. If you look only to those who actually voted for either Trump or Harris, Trump won by a quite slim total amount of votes, a 1.5% difference (Trump 49.8%-Harris 48.3%). However, since those were not the only two candidates, and because Trump did not even reach the 50% threshold, it cannot truthfully be claimed that he even won a majority of the popular vote at all much less an “overwhelming” majority. Instead, he won only by a plurality vote.
If Ms. Bondi is so willing to lie about something so easily disproven, it is difficult to reach a conclusion other than the fact that this violation of Florida’s Rule 4-8.4(c) raises real questions about her honesty trustworthiness. But the point that she was pursuing, and attempting to further, by telling such an obvious lie makes the situation even more serious.
The rest of the exchange laid out above demonstrates that Ms. Bondi was making that false claim to give sway to her overall attack on particular federal district court judges and the federal judiciary as a whole for issuing rulings that Trump does not agree with. Now, it seems quite possible that Ms. Bondi will eventually take actions against judges, as well as against lawyers (under the guise of a memo from Trump purporting to be able to tell the Department of Justice what actions it is required to take), that will involve violations of other aspects of the attorney ethics rules, but for now those lines have yet to be definitively crossed.
Ms. Bondi’s violation of Rule 4-8.4(c) last Sunday, however, is crystal clear. Perhaps if the Florida Bar treats that violation with the level of seriousness it deserves, then Ms. Bondi will tread more carefully in the future and, perhaps, come to remember that the Attorney General of the United States is not the President’s lawyer.
But even if it does not have that effect, the violation is clear and should not go unaddressed. If Ms. Bondi had wanted to have the unfettered right to go on television and lie to further Trump’s agenda, there are a number of politically appointed positions she could have tried to obtain. Or, she even could have, like Ms. Conway, simply taken on the role of an advisor to the President. She did not. She agreed to become Attorney General of the United States. The Attorney General of the United States is not, and must never be allowed to become, a position where blatant public falsehoods in furtherance of a President’s political agenda are permissible.