'Incredibly harmful': why Trump's FBI and DoJ picks scare civil liberties experts

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

74% : Trump has lavished praise on both picks, calling Patel a "brilliant lawyer" and "advocate for truth", while hailing Bondi as "loyal" and "qualified".
57% : When Bondi was Florida's attorney general in 2013, Trump donated $25,000 to a Pac backing her re-election.
53% : Related: Project 2025: the Trump picks with ties to ultra-rightwing policy manifestoBondi also spent several years as a lobbyist for the powerhouse Florida firm led by Republican fundraiser Brian Ballard, where her clients included Amazon, General Motors, and the government of Qatar.Often seen as a political operator, Bondi has ties to Trump that go back further and have raised some red flags.
43% : "Still casting about for a Roy Cohn replacement, Trump has gone to people like Bondi and Patel whose loyalty comes from their utter dependence on his favor," Richman said.
42% : "Such concerns about both nominees have been reinforced by their eager echoing of Trump's conspiratorial obsession of going after "deep state" foes, as well as their old ties to Trump and backgrounds.
37% : Bondi, a recent corporate lobbyist and an ex-Florida attorney general, defended Trump during his first impeachment and was active on the campaign trail during the late stages of his 2024 run.
37% : Patel also wrote that Trump "must fire the top ranks of the FBI".
25% : Meanwhile, Bondi, 59, told Fox News last year that when Trump wins "you know what's going to happen: the Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones.
16% : By tapping two combative ultra-loyalists to run the FBI and the justice department, Donald Trump has sparked fears they will pursue the president-elect's calls for "revenge" against his political foes and sack officials who Trump demonizes as "deep state" opponents, say ex-DoJ prosecutors.
14% : Patel and Bondi have each mimicked Trump's calls for taking revenge against key Democrats and officials, including ones who pursued criminal charges against Trump for his aggressive efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat and his role in inflaming the January 6 attack on the Capitol that led to five deaths.
13% : Trump tapped her for the post within hours of his first candidate for AG, ex-Florida congressman Matt Gaetz's dropping out after serious allegations arose of sexual misconduct that led to a House ethics inquiry while he was in office.
12% : Patel, who lacks experience leading an agency, shares Trump's obsession and vindictiveness towards political critics and the press who Trump has branded an "enemy of the people".
9% : "At the end of his first term as Trump scrambled aggressively to block Biden's win, he briefly tried to install Patel as number two at the FBI or the CIA for support, but the idea died when then attorney general Bill Barr vowed "over my dead body".
4% : Chris Wray, who Trump appointed as director after firing James Comey in 2017 and who Trump has often criticized, has three years left in his ten-year term, so he'd have to resign or be fired to make way for Patel.
3% : Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, who Trump has nominated to run the FBI and DoJ, respectively, have been unswerving loyalists to Trump for years, promoting Trump's false claims that his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden was due to fraud.

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