Attorney General Pam Bondi is once again under the microscope—this time back in Florida, where she’s been accused of turning the Justice Department into a tool for political revenge.
The ethics complaint, first reported by the Miami Herald, was filed Thursday by a nearly 70-person coalition of attorneys, law professors, and former Florida Supreme Court justices, including Barbara Pariente, James Perry, and Peggy Quince. They accuse Bondi of “serious professional misconduct that threatens the rule of law and the administration of justice.”
According to the filing, Bondi violated Florida Bar rules by using her office to serve President Donald Trump’s political goals, pressuring DOJ lawyers to “violate their ethical obligations under the guise of ‘zealous advocacy.’”
The complaint also says that she threatened to discipline—or outright fire—any lawyer who didn’t comply, claiming that Bondi played a central role in a wave of high-level DOJ resignations and terminations.
Among them was the ousting of veteran prosecutor Denise Cheung, who resigned after refusing to investigate a Biden-era contract without evidence. Her resignation letter ended up in the hands of Trump ally Ed Martin. Another was Erez Reuveni, a seasoned immigration lawyer who was reportedly let go after objecting to the imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an asylum seeker who was wrongly deported and jailed in El Salvador due to a bureaucratic error.
DOJ officials dismissed the complaint outright, with DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle calling it the third attempt by “out-of-state lawyers to weaponize the bar complaint process.”
“This third vexatious attempt will fail to do anything other than prove that the signatories have less intelligence—and independent thoughts—than sheep,” he said.
Technically, the Florida Bar rejected two earlier complaints, claiming that it doesn’t investigate federal officials appointed under the Constitution while they’re in office. But the coalition isn’t buying that.
“The Florida Bar’s dismissal is unsupported by history or precedent,” they wrote in the complaint, arguing that no rule shields a Florida-licensed attorney from accountability just because they’re in federal office.
Bondi’s critics have long accused her of putting Trump ahead of the law. Since being confirmed, she’s spent more time on Fox News than in the DOJ building and has made headlines for targeting Trump’s perceived enemies—from Democratic officials and protestors to entire universities.
She’s also brought fresh scrutiny on herself. ProPublica reported that Bondi dumped somewhere between $1 million and $5 million worth of Trump Media shares on April 2—the same day that Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff stunt sent the markets into chaos.
Bondi’s defenders say she’s simply doing her job. But that job now includes slashing anti-corruption efforts, supercharging immigration crackdowns, and turning the civil rights division into a front in the GOP’s culture war. The DOJ, once known for expertise and independence, is now nothing more than a platform for Trump’s personal agenda.
And it’s not just that Bondi broke her promise to keep politics out of the DOJ—it’s that she might be reshaping it in Trump’s image. During her January confirmation hearing, she told senators that “the partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone.”
“America will have one tier of justice for all,” she claimed.
Since then, though, it seems like there’s one tier for Trump and another for everyone else.
Whether this ethics complaint sticks remains to be seen. A spokesperson for the Florida Bar confirmed receipt of the complaint to the Miami Herald but declined to comment further, citing bar rules.
Still, the complaint underscores a deeper concern: that under Bondi, the DOJ no longer serves the law—it serves Trump.