The nation’s largest private prison company, the GEO Group, has seen its stock soar in the weeks since Donald Trump’s election in anticipation of new contracts linked to mass deportation.
Trump’s new choice for U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi, worked as GEO’s lobbyist as recently as 2019. Her list of corporate clients also includes Amazon, the tech giant currently embroiled in an antitrust fight with the federal government.
Trump announced his selection of Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, hours after another loyalist of his, Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration Thursday under growing scrutiny of allegations that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl.
Bondi will bring her own baggage to the nomination process in the form of a long list of clients she maintained at the powerhouse D.C. lobbying firm Ballard Partners, which also included the Qatari government, General Motors, and the Florida Sheriffs Association, among others.
One critic of the revolving door between politics and lobbying said Bondi’s work for those firms exemplified “the maturation of the political strategy of corporate America and our oligarch class” to spread even more money around beyond campaign donations.
“Pam Bondi surely did work for these clients the past four years — but........