Alumna Attorney General Pam Bondi Under Friendly Fire
Disclosure: Since the time this article was written in March 2026, Pamela Bondi was terminated from her post as Attorney General. President Donald Trump confirmed this in an April 2, 2026 press release.
Heat on Capitol Hill (and Campus, too)
Just over a year into her term as the 87th U.S. Attorney General of the Trump administration, Pamela Bondi, an alumna of Stetson Law School, has recently fallen under scrutiny both from Capitol officials and current Hatters – in the wake of her Feb. 11 testimony at the Epstein hearings.
Though Bondi has surmounted the top rung of the judicial ladder, her performance during the hearing riled onlookers, whether they watched the Cable-Sattelite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN) from a phone screen or witnessed it from the bench. Countless lawmakers have since called for her resignation and criticized her apparent ‘deflections’ when asked about file redactions, even accusing her of “lying under oath,” as did Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif.
In recent weeks on campus there have been stirrings on Yik Yak, the student-beloved chat thread modeled after X, with Hatters refusing to identify themselves with the Attorney General.
One anonymous commenter claimed it was an “embarrassing time to be pre-law,” and another asked to “petition the school to take away pam bondis law degree atp.”
Responses to the latter thread argued that “She couldn’t answer one question,” and that her strategy was to "Deflect, insult, and blame the media.” These reactions, of course, were just a cherry-picked sampler from the Yak’s slew of Bondi insults, most of them containing the words “underqualified” and “disgrace.” Many have begun to question the merit of the law program altogether because of its high-profile alumna on Capitol Hill.
A Look at Madame Attorney General’s Resume
In 1990, Bondi graduated with her Juris doctor degree from Stetson, going on to become a Florida prosecutor in Hillsborough county, where she tried domestic and capital cases for the next 18 years.
She then, notably, secured the position of Florida’s 37th Attorney General as the first woman to hold that office in the state’s history. During two consecutive four-year terms spanning from 2011 to 2019, Bondi’s work as Florida Attorney General focused largely on extinguishing the state’s reputation as the ‘pill mill capital,’ invoking legislation which shut down 98 oxycodone-dispensing medical practices that had been distributing wrongfully.
Passionate about drug prevention and treatment, Bondi was also appointed to President Donald Trump’s Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission. Attorney General Bondi held human trafficking as another primary agenda during her tenure for Florida – she championed efforts to strengthen state laws and offer resources for victims.
It was under her name that the Florida Statewide Human Trafficking Council was formed, of which she served as Chair until the close of her second term.
Sworn in on Feb. 5, 2025, as U.S. Attorney General Bondi has since spearheaded numerous law enforcement investigations in the first year of her term as the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Amid her testimony during the Feb. 11, 2026, court hearing, Bondi listed statistics in her favor: “In 2025, we saw the lowest murder rate in 125 years…That's nothing short of historic… The FBI arrested over 1,700 child predators, a 10% increase from 2024. We also located 2,700 victims of child exploitation and shut down 3.8 million dark web pedophile accounts.”
In similar statements made by Judiciary Committee Chair and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the DOJ’s accomplishments over the last year have also resulted in “murders [being] down nationwide by 20%, D.C. violent crime is down by 28%...and the recovery of sixteen missing kids.”
Ohio Rep. Jordan praised Bondi for these accolades, claiming that “Under Attorney General Bondi the DOJ has returned to its core missions: upholding the rule of law, going after the bad guys and keeping Americans safe.” He closed his time by thanking the Attorney General for “her great work in the first year on the job.”
Redactions and Reactions
This past year, after a long-awaited six-year period since American financier and sex offender Jeffery Epstein’s death in his Metropolitan Correctional Center cell in New York, President Donald Trump signed the Epstein Transparency Act, or H.R. 4405, into law on Nov. 19, 2025. The act ordered the Department of Justice to release a sum of about 6 million files, images and email conversations between Epstein and his accomplices to the public eye.
In her Feb. 11 testimony, Bondi professed that she “came into office with the goal of refocusing the DOJ on its core mission after years of bloated bureaucracy...keeping the American people safe.”
On the Epstein file releases, the Attorney General claimed “more than five hundred [of my] attorneys...spent thousands of hours painstakingly reviewing millions of pages to comply with Congress’s law,” said Bondi.
Behind her sat a considerable group of victims who had survived Epstein’s island and family members of late victims. Bondi reminded these survivors that she had been a “career prosecutor and...I have spent my entire career fighting for victims” and was “deeply sorry for what any victim...has been through, especially as a result of that monster,” Bondi said.
In their opening statements, though, multiple Congress members fired criticism towards the Attorney General. Many insulted her Department’s execution of the file releases and failure to redact many victims’ names, thereby rendering them fully visible to the public.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., was the first to make these allegations, claiming that she “ignored the law,” in a “complete corruption of the justice function,” and that her Department’s “performance screams cover-up.” He began his time at the mic by acknowledging the group of survivors – men and women – gathered behind Bondi’s podium, introducing them by name.
“You still haven’t met with these survivors… Madame Attorney General,” said Raskin, claiming she had been, up to that point, “siding with the perpetrators and ignoring the victims. That will be your legacy unless you act quickly to change course.”
Regarding file redactions – the blacked out names peppered throughout the files available on the DOJ’s website – he accused Bondi of redacting “the names of abusers, accomplices and co-conspirators apparently to spare them embarrassment and disgrace, which is the exact opposite of what the law ordered you to do,” Raskin said.
To indicate contrast, Raskin addressed Bondi when he shared, “you’ve shockingly failed to redact many of the victims’ names...even with over 100,000 employees at your disposal, you acted with some mixture of staggering incompetence, cold indifference and jaded cruelty.”
Rep. Raskin pleaded with the Attorney General to not repeat her performance in her Oct. 4 Senate oversight hearings from the previous year, in which she deflected criticism suggesting that she had weaponized the DOJ to combat President Trump’s political rivals.
In reference to the 2004 film “Mean Girls” and its blonde protagonist’s choice of weapon against her high school nemeses, "This isn’t a game. In the Senate, you brought...a ‘burn book,’ a binder of smears to attack members personally for doing the people’s work of oversight. Please set the ‘burn book’ aside,” Raskin said.
Adopting the same critical tone, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., utilized the redacted version of file EFTA00666117 as visual supplement to her statement, otherwise known as the email containing the phrase “I loved the torture video.”
As Rep. Raskin did, Rep. Jayapal continued the string of accusations against Bondi for being in “violation of the law...redacting the names of powerful predators,” and that it was “only after members of Congress demanded [it] did the world learn the name of this individual, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem,” said Jayapal.
Challenging Attorney General Bondi’s testimony where she positioned herself as defending victims, Rep. Jayapal claimed quite an opposite truth. "This release does not provide closure, it feels like a deliberate attempt to intimidate survivors, punish those who came forward and reinforce the same culture of secrecy that allowed Epstein’s crimes to continue for decades.”
She then asked the victims seated behind Bondi to stand, and to raise their hands “if you have… not been able to meet with the DOJ,” Jayapal said, to which every single survivor raised their hand – attesting that none of them had been personally approached by the Department or the FBI to further investigate their cases.
As tensions grew, the hearing quickly turned to a congressional stand-off reminiscent of Bondi’s Oct. 4 Senate hearing, as Rep. Jayapal requested a direct apology from the Attorney General to those victims: “You apologized to the survivors in your opening statement for what they went through...will you turn to them now and apologize for what your department has put them through?” A request to which Bondi silently remained seated and facing forward.
When the time was given to the Madame Attorney General to respond, she did not address the victims but claimed “I’m not gonna get in the gutter for her theatrics. This woman...she’s doing theatrics,” Bondi said.
Stetson Law Alums Call ‘Erroneous’
In the weeks following the hearing, Bondi’s alma mater has taken notice of her conduct. Stetson Law graduates have penned open letters to the Gulfport campus, requesting the university to issue a public statement in defense of the program’s prestige despite recent opprobrium.
In response to The Reporter’s own inquiry for comment, Stetson Law Communications replied, “Because we must follow the principle of institutional neutrality on political matters, we have no comment.”
Yet prominent Stetson law graduates – including attorneys and judges – have not slowed their attempts to lobby the institution from which they earned their degrees. Johnny Bardine, an attorney and graduate of Stetson Law, is the author of the open letter sent to the College of Law on Feb. 23, 2026, – not even two weeks after Bondi’s hearing.
In his letter, Bardine expressed “grave concern” about the Attorney General’s conduct, requesting Dean Benjamin Barros and the Board of Trustees to issue a public statement re-committing the school’s founding principles to the rule of law and to declare “formal disapproval” of Bondi’s actions.
“When an alumnus of Stetson University College of Law ascends to the office of Attorney General of the United States, it should be a source of profound pride for the institution and its graduates,” said Bardine. “Instead, recent events have transformed what should have been a moment of distinction into a source of embarrassment and dismay for many within the Stetson Law community. The conduct displayed...has reflected not the highest ideals of our profession, but a troubling departure from them.”
As the first law school founded in the state of Florida, Stetson’s College of Law has long
pioneered values of integrity, transparency and decorum within the legal profession. Prestigious judges, politicians and federal officials have made up its graduates such as Louis DeJoy, who served as the 75th U.S. postmaster general and Julia Nesheiwat, the 10th homeland security advisor. These alumni have served numerous consecutive presidential administrations.
Upon Pamela Bondi’s confirmation, the law school proudly named her as their first alum to ever take the office of U.S. Attorney General.
Yet the open letter goes on to admonish Bondi for “the moment in which she wouldn’t turn around and acknowledge the Epstein survivors and the sort of glib look on her face...which is… immediately antithetical to the Florida oath of attorney which requires we handle ourselves with ethics and candor,” Bardine said.
Bardine’s letter amassed more than four hundred signatures, and that number is still growing, he told Bay News 9. “In a perfect world, I think the Dean makes a statement that says, ‘This is not who we are.’”
Pre-law Premonitions
On the Deland campus there have also been student responses stirring post-hearing. Alejandra Echavarria, ‘27, is a pre-law student who expressed both her respect for Attorney General Bondi’s testifying strategy as well as suspicion towards the current federal administration’s merit. Her undergraduate law studies enabled Echavarria to assess Bondi’s tactics from a technical lens.
“She often re-framed questions...and narrowed them down mostly to the legal procedure, rather than engaging with the broader implications. And from a pre-law perspective, we talk about how lawyers and attorneys do try to control the framing of an argument,” said Echavarria.
To the laity, this strategy may have communicated deflection, Echavarria explained. “As someone who values transparency in government, it was kind of like, ‘Hey, she’s redirecting rather than fully addressing,’ which can sometimes leave us as the public feel like we’re not getting a clear answer,” Echavarria said.
In her testimony, Bondi relied primarily on statistical evidence when advocating for the DOJ’s accomplishments of 2025. When questioned on the superiority of statistics versus execution method in the assessment of government ‘performance,’ Echavarria recommended a combination of both.
“Statistics can show outcomes, like how many cases are prosecuted or resolved, but numbers alone can’t tell you whether justice was actually served,” Echavarria said. "The process just as much matters as the results. The methods...have to respect due process, fairness and transparency,” Echavarria said.
After all, these principles were the foundation upon which the nation’s creed was set in parchment: those age-old words spelling “We The People.” Echavarria agreed. “In democracy, people need to trust that their government agencies aren’t just producing results [but] that they’re going to follow ethical and legal standards while doing it. You need to combine both to be able to get the true success of the DOJ,” Echavarria said.
Tensions ran high when Bondi’s performance reached Stetson’s YikYak platform, the exclusive student chat thread which garnered an overall reaction deeming the Attorney General as "underqualified."
Despite the public use of this term, ever since the passage of The Pendleton Act of 1883 under President Andrew Jackson’s administration, the federal government has appointed its employees through that of a merit-based system.
“The merit system means that people in government positions should be hired and promoted based off of their qualifications, experience and their ability to serve the public. Not necessarily [what] their...loyalty to policy or their political… [or] personal connections can get them,” Echavarria said, adding, “When it’s working properly, it protects public institutions from becoming overly politicized and ensure agencies are staffed with people who have the expertise needed.”
The authenticity of this long-instated system has been challenged as of late by students, however, with Echavarria herself included.
“At the moment... it’s not being used to the extent it should be used. A lot of our high-up political officials are using... personal connections and political loyalty to get positions of power,” Echavarria said. “A lot of the appointments have been...kind of weird. Seeing McMann as the Secretary for Education, nobody expected that. That was out of left field," Echavarria said.
A similar pattern has planted itself in the undergraduate pre-law realm, Echavarria suggests. “Even now, we’re hearing as pre-laws, ‘Connections, connections, connections.’ Connections are everything, rather than ‘Hey, build your experience. Go get that internship right now’...because your connections are going to help you further than your experience,” Echavarria said.
Being the daughter of two immigrant parents, and as one herself, Echavarria recognized the threat of the merit system’s gaps: “I grew up hearing that hard work and education are supposed to open doors and I think that’s what a lot of Americans want to believe: that [the] government works the same way. But… there’s growing skepticism [on] whether politics and connections outweighs merit.”
To Testify, or Not to Testify (Again)
At the time of this writing, additional legislative hearings are to be expected on this issue. On March 17., Bondi was subpoenaed by Congress for another round of questioning on the DOJ’s handling of the files.
Following a Republican-supported vote by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Attorney General is to appear April 14 for deposition.
-Breana Gergen '28
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