The real story of Pam Bondi, Trump University, and the $25,000 check

Here's how this story looked from the perspective of the NY AG's office in 2013, right after I filed the Trump University prosecution -- and Trump's broader pattern of payments to prosecutors.

Pam Bondi is Donald Trump’s new choice for Attorney General, after Matt Gaetz withdrew his name yesterday, lacking support from Republican Senators and with further revelations of alleged sex trafficking, including of an underage 17-year-old. (I am in some disbelief that I actually have to write that sentence, and it’s not satire.)

This has immediately stirred up the most well-known scandal involving Bondi, who was previously Florida AG, and Trump — namely, Trump’s payment of $25,000 to a Bondi political action committee right when Bondi’s office was considering joining the New York AG’s civil prosecution of Trump University back in 2013. Florida ultimately did not join the case.

I was the attorney of record for the New York AG on the case at that time — here’s what happened.

I filed our case against Trump University, the Trump Organization, and Donald Trump on Saturday, August 24, 2013 — it was a meticulously detailed case, with victims’ accounts fully corroborated by transcripts of recordings inside the Trump University seminars, finding $42 million in fraud. The case was a headline news story for the next several days, getting nationwide attention in that last week before Labor Day 2013.

Yet unbeknownst to us at the time, on Wednesday, August 28, 2013, there was an email exchange between Rhona Graff, Trump’s executive assistant, and the campaign finance director for Pam Bondi. Graff was writing to get the information needed for Trump to send a contribution to Bondi — the entity name to which the check should be made payable, and the correct address.

After the Labor Day weekend, our team at the Consumer Frauds Bureau at the New York AG’s office was abuzz with the prospect that Florida might join our case. This is a common occurrence among state attorneys general, joining one another’s cases when there is a multistate issue — and in our case, Trump University had defrauded over 6,000 victims across America, and Florida had been one of the biggest states affected.

We were also intrigued about Florida joining the case because it opened up the possibility that, if needed, we could pursue additional witnesses and documents that were Florida-based (a state AG’s subpoena is only enforceable in that state, unless state1 can get state2 to help; we had generally assumed that Bondi’s team was not going to be helpful, and we had a wealth of evidence already, so we had not pursued targets in Florida, even though the majority of the “instructors” and the contractor that had created most of the “curriculum” materials were Florida-based).

At the request of my bureau chief, I pulled together the key documents from our case, so they could be emailed to the Florida folks.

But again, unbeknownst to us, on September 13, 2013, Trump sent a check for $25,000 to one of Bondi’s PACs, And Justice For All, along with a handwritten note, misspelling Bondi’s name as “Pam Biondi” and saying “Dear Pam, You are the greatest!”¹

Trump’s check to Bondi’s PAC, for $25,000, right when the Florida AG’s office was considering joining the Trump University prosecution.

Back at the AG’s office, we suddenly had radio silence — and we never heard from the Florida AG’s office again.

Florida never joined our case.

So what happened here? Was this a mere coincidence? Or was it a clear quid pro quo? Did Trump just happen to want to make a donation to Bondi a mere four days after the New York AG’s case was filed? Really?

Yet what often gets missed here is that this was part of a larger pattern of Trump making suspicious payments to prosecutors investigating him and his businesses — including Trump University.

Here’s another story (and these are all detailed in Chapter 2 of Taking Down Trump). Greg Abbott was the AG of Texas before becoming governor. In 2010, the Texas AG’s office investigated and strongly considered action against Trump University: in fact, their consumer protection team issued a memo on May 11, 2010, proposing that the office make a settlement demand on Trump of $5.4 million to recover refunds for Texas victims. Abbott’s executive team rejected the proposal.

Later, when Abbott ran for governor of Texas in 2014, Donald Trump sent him two checks, totaling $35,000. Yet arguably this is even more suspicious as the Bondi donation, because at least in Florida, Donald Trump has properties and business interests. In Texas, he had none at all. In fact he had never had anything to do with Texas politics at that time. Trump’s only apparent connection to Texas at that point was the Texas AG investigation of Trump University.

And it goes beyond Trump University. Trump managed to get Don Jr. and Ivanka off the hook for criminal fraud (for defrauding buyers of condos at the now-defunct Trump Soho in NYC) despite an investigation at the Manhattan DA’s office that nearly resulted in indictments, right around the same time that the lawyer who represented Trump in the matter, Marc Kasowitz, was responsible for around $50,000 in donations to Cy Vance, who was Manhattan DA at the time.

Before that, in the 1980s, Trump was being probed for Mafia activity by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York — which was then led by none other than Rudy Giuliani. The Feds assigned an investigator to interview Trump, but before any interview occurred, the matter was mysteriously dropped and no formal investigation was ever opened. Yet Trump soon thereafter bragged publicly that he would raise money for Giuliani if he ran for mayor of NYC — and Trump ultimately did back Rudy, both in 1989 (when he lost) and in 1993 (when he won).

So you tell me. As the saying goes, one’s a point, two’s a line, three’s a trend. What seems clear to me is a pattern and practice of conveniently timed financial support for prosecutors, going back decades — and Pam Bondi was one of the recipients of Trump’s largesse.

But will journalists — and Senators — bother to question Bondi about this, and what it says about her professional integrity, ability to be independent from Trump, and ability to discharge the duties of the office of Attorney General?²

Or will she skate by, in yet another disgusting display of the rank corruption of our system, with all its dirty money and criminal cronies?

We need to make sure this full story gets told — and any profile of Bondi or analysis of her nomination that does not include this story is itself another example of corrupt complicity.

1. To top it all off, that check to Bondi was paid by the Trump Foundation, which was a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity that Trump ran at the time with Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka. Using a 501(c)(3) charity to make a political donation is illegal — and my colleagues in the Charities Bureau of the New York AG’s office later prosecuted the Trump Foundation for this and other misconduct, resulting in a $2 million victory and the shutdown of the Foundation.

2. And this doesn’t even get into all the questions that should be raised around Bondi’s election-denying support of the Big Lie and the January 6 conspiracy in 2020-2021.