POWER PLAY

In Pam Bondi, Donald Trump has the Attorney General he always dreamed of.

- BY RUTH MARCUS

Bondi, one former official said, is turning the Justice Department into “a pure and unfiltered tool of politics and revenge.”

SOURCE PHOTOGRAPH BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY

It is rare for an Attorney General of the United States to venture into the offices of the Justice Department's National Security Division. Up two floors and down a hallway the length of a city block from the A.G.'s fifth-floor suite, the division is a high-security area; visitors must deposit their cellphones in a cabinet before they enter and are required to punch in a code at the door. At about 1 P.M. on February 10th, just a few days after she was sworn in as the nation's eighty-seventh Attorney General, Pam Bondi arrived at the division, accompanied by her security detail. A secretary stepped into the office of the division's acting chief, Devin DeBacker. “Were you expecting the Attorney General?” she asked. De-Backer hurried out and saw Bondi. She was holding framed portraits of leaders of the prior Administration—President Joe Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris, and Bondi’s predecessor, Merrick Garland. For the past four years, the portraits had hung on the wall, and the facilities staff hadn't yet got around to removing them. Bondi, furious, did the job herself. “Don't you people realize who won the election?” she demanded. DeBacker had served in the White House counsel’s office during Donald Trump's first Administration and was about to be named the senior deputy of the division. Instead, hours after Bondi’s appearance, he was informed that he was being demoted. The offending portraits were cited as the cause.