Trump Throws Pam Bondi Under the Bus on Georgia Election Office Raid

The White House is letting Attorney General Pam Bondi take the heat for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s presence at the Fulton County, Georgia, election office during an FBI raid.

Last week, Gabbard was photographed overseeing FBI agents as they packed up and walked out with ballots from the 2020 presidential election, despite the fact that she is prohibited from taking part in domestic law enforcement operations. As public scrutiny boiled over, Gabbard told Democratic lawmakers that Donald Trump himself had asked her to be there—but he is apparently not sticking by her side.

Instead, Trump blamed Gabbard’s attendance on Bondi Thursday, telling attendees at the National Prayer Breakfast that Gabbard “took a lot of heat ... because she went in at Pam’s insistence ... and she looked at votes.

“They say, ‘Why is she doing it?’” Trump said. “Because Pam wanted her to do it.”

But the president’s explanations have been far from consistent. During a sit-down interview with NBC News Wednesday, Trump tried to explain away Gabbard’s latest controversy by blaming the whole fiasco on China’s alleged attempts to infiltrate U.S. elections.

“Why is Tulsi Gabbard there?” asked NBC’s Tom Llamas, point-blank.

“I don’t know, but you know, uh, a lot of the cheating comes from, it’s international cheating,” Trump told the network. “You have people—they say—from China trying to, let me ask you, do you think China tries to influence our election?”

“We know that foreign governments try to influence a lot of things in this country,” Llamas replied.

“Well, therefore, she’s foreign governments,” Trump said.

Since Trump first planted the seeds of doubt about the results of the 2020 election, a litany of his allies have continued to tend and water the theory—so much so that within a handful of years, refusing to admit that Trump ever lost to Joe Biden has become a fealty test for MAGA membership.

But there is no doubt: Trump lost that election by a landslide, coming up short by 38 electoral votes. More evidence that Trump did not win is the fact that he was not inaugurated in 2021, and did not serve a day as president until he succeeded in 2024.

But for anyone still in doubt, know that the theory has been thoroughly debunked by the president’s own appointees. Trump’s previous attorney general, Bill Barr, announced in 2022 that despite an intensive, multi-agency investigation, no evidence of widespread fraud had been discovered that supported the president’s wild claims.

Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts announced a lawsuit Wednesday aimed at challenging the FBI’s sudden seizure of the county’s electoral ballots.