Former State Rep. Jack Williams (R-Vestavia Hills) is now the director of External Affairs of Alabama Public Television. In that role, he is now in Washington, D.C. for America’s Public Television Annual Summit.
At a breakfast restaurant before the meetings, Williams saw that all the dining tables were full. There was one table with two unoccupied chairs and a blonde-headed woman sitting across the table. He politely asked her if he could sit there and eat. She politely said yes.
Jack, an affable, down-to-earth Southern gentleman, began talking with the woman. He asked what she did in Washington.
She replied, “I am the Attorney General of the United States.”
Williams had accidentally sat down with a new member of the Trump cabinet, the chief law enforcement officer of the nation, the head of the U.S. Department of Justice, Pam Bondi.
Here's the way Jack told the story on Facebook:
There’s a casual restaurant just off the lobby of the hotel I’m staying in this week in DC. There was a couple seated at a table with the only two empty chairs across from them. I asked if we could join them. They graciously said yes. The four of us began to talk and discovered they were from Florida. The wife said she worked in DC. I asked what she did. She told me she was the Attorney General of the United States. We had just crashed the table with Pam Bondi and her husband. They were a delightful couple. Very engaging. It was an honor to meet them.
Jack kept his cool. The two continued to talk, and the conversation steered to the weaponization of the U.S. Department of Justice and federal prosecutions. Jack says that he informed Bondi of some problems with politicalized federal prosecutions in Alabama. Williams had been the target of one of those himself.
The two swapped business cards. Something tells me this will not be the last communication between the two.
What do you bet AG Bondi did not know who Jack Williams was either until he filled her in?
Who else but Jack Williams could accidentally stumble into this kind of situation and handle it well?
Good things for Alabama could come out of this serendipitous encounter.
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at ZeiglerElderCare@yahoo.com.
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