As Florida’s top prosecutor, Pam Bondi cracked down on drug trafficking, pi

President-elect Donald Trump last week announced the nomination of Florida’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi, to head up the Justice Department, touching off a flurry of speculation as to how Bondi, a longtime prosecutor and close ally of Trump, might lead the department.

Former colleagues who knew her best during her time as a Florida prosecutor, including a Democrat opponent for state attorney general who she later tapped to be her drug czar, described Bondi in a series of interviews as an experienced litigator whose leadership style is more consensus-builder than bridge-burner and whose tenure may generate less friction among rank-and-file career staff at the Justice Department than early critics might fear. 

If confirmed, those close to Bondi told Fox News Digital that she will likely espouse many of the same priorities she did in her years as a prosecutor in Florida, primarily in cracking down on drug trafficking, illicit fentanyl imports and in running a Justice Department that enforces fair treatment of both political and career appointees alike.

“From a lawyer’s standpoint, this woman knows how to be a lawyer and a trial lawyer,” Nicholas Cox, Florida’s statewide prosecutor, told Fox News Digital of Bondi’s record. “There’s just not a question about it.” 

Here are some of the ways her time in Florida could inform her tenure as attorney general. 

Drug crackdown: 

In Florida, Bondi quickly earned a reputation for cracking down on opioids and the many “pill mills” operating in the Sunshine State when she was elected as the state’s attorney general in 2010. At the time, Florida “was the epicenter of the opioid crisis,” Florida statewide prosecutor Nicholas Cox said in an interview.

It was also a hub for so-called drug tourism: Out-of-state residents traveled to Florida from across the country to purchase opioids in bulk, relying on the state’s many-house pharmacies, “cash-only” clinics and a lack of statewide prescribing laws to purchase the addictive medications, largely without restriction.

When Bondi took office, opioids were killing around seven people each day, Dave Aronberg, the state attorney for Palm Beach County, who formerly served as Bondi’s drug czar, said in an interview. 

There were also “more pain clinics than McDonald’s locations” in Florida at the time, he said, illustrating the magnitude of the problem. 

Aronberg, a Democrat who ran against Bondi for…