After she stayed silent on Matt Gaetz's previous nomination to Attorney General, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody joined 29 other Republicans in a letter Tuesday pressuring the U.S. Senate to confirm Pam Bondi as the nation's next top prosecutor.
Moody, 26 current Attorneys General, and three future Attorneys General praised former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as a "superb choice" with "extraordinary" leadership skills in the letter addressed to Senate leaders Chuck Schumer, John Thune, and Mitch McConnell.
"After her work over nearly two decades of prosecuting murderers and standing up for crime victims, [Bondi] became Florida’s first female Attorney General and took the fight straight to the drug smugglers, human traffickers, and serial rapists," Moody said Tuesday of the letter, which has signatures from officials in 28 different states. "Bondi shut down pill mills, put human traffickers behind bars, and fought to eliminate the backlog of untested sexual assault kits—to bring predators to justice and some sense of closure to victims of rape.
"Her stellar record as an attorney general, state prosecutor, and fighter for justice has prepared her to serve as the nation’s 87th U.S. Attorney General and we look forward to a swift, successful confirmation," Moody continued, referencing that with Republicans' slim Senate majority, every Democrat and three Republicans could vote against Bondi's confirmation and she could still advance to the post.
This call to action is a far cry from Moody's response to former Congressman Matt Gaetz's nomination to the post. She remained silent after Trump nominated him in mid-November, joining a chorus of Republicans who either said nothing or rebuked Gaetz for potentially assuming the position. While some pointed to allegations that he had paid a minor for sex, others simply didn't like the conservative firebrand, who had partially boosted his name ID by antagonizing or turning on Republicans and Democrats alike.
Moody and other attorney generals did not send a letter of support for Gaetz, signaling the low level of support he faced among members of his own party, and he eventually withdrew his name from consideration. That led Trump to replace one Floridian with another: he traded Gaetz, a Florida man, for Bondi, a Florida woman.
And Bondi, unlike Gaetz, boasts massive support among Republicans and has even been acknowledged by Democrats as a "heck of a lot better" than the former AG pick. 59-year-old Bondi has also been making the Capitol Hill rounds this week in hopes of garnering Senate support—without JD Vance as her shepherd, who had navigated Gaetz from meeting to meeting, Politico noted.
Moody, who spearheaded the letter alongside South Carolina AG Alan Wilson, took over the Florida prosecutor role from Bondi in 2019. She has since been a top ally to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
State Attorney Generals from the following states joined Moody's and Wilson's letter:
Alabama, Kansas, Alaska, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Idaho, Missouri, Indiana, Montana, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
