Sen. Tim Kaine said Sunday he is open to voting for President Trump’s next attorney general nominee, but he also warned that whoever takes the job should learn a lesson from Pam Bondi’s downfall by resisting pressure to be the president’s loyalist.
“I never start off as an automatic no,” the Virginia Democrat said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We’ll see who the president proposes.”
Mr. Kaine broke with his party to support some of Mr. Trump’s Cabinet picks, including former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, a decision he later regretted.
On Sunday, he reiterated his belief that a president has a mandate to build his own executive team. He said he would vote no only if a nominee lacked qualifications or character.
But he used the opening to deliver a sharp warning to whoever Mr. Trump taps next.
Ms. Bondi, he argued, abandoned the independence the job demands to be at Mr. Trump’s beck and call and still got fired.
“You can either go in as an attorney general and stand up for the rule of law, and you may make Donald Trump mad,” Mr. Kaine said. “Or you can go in and try to just do everything the president wants, and you’re going to make him mad.”
He said Ms. Bondi “sold out her own integrity” and “couldn’t even look at herself in a mirror.”
“That should be a lesson to whoever is the next nominee for AG,” the senator said. “Be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, and don’t let the president cause you to trim your conscience or become a toady.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has been installed as acting head of the Department of. Justice.
Mr. Blanche and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin are considered possible replacements.
Other names being bandied about include Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division; Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia; and Sen. Eric Schmitt, Missouri Republican.
