President Donald Trump has ousted Pam Bondi as attorney general.
The president announced Bondi’s exit in a post Thursday on Truth Social.
Trump said she would “be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future.”
Bondi’s abrupt exit concludes a year-long tenure marked by the breakneck erosion of the firewall between prosecutorial decision-making and the whims of a president seeking to punish his enemies.
The departure comes at a point of maximum turmoil for the Justice Department, which has seen an exodus of veteran prosecutors targeted for their perceived disloyalty toTrump, the collapse of trust from federal judges, a buckling under the weight of Trump’s mass deportation campaign, and intense blowback over its botched rollout of the Epstein files.
Signals of Trump’s frustration and Bondi’s pending demise surfaced this week after reports that Trump met with EPA boss Lee Zeldin and discussed tapping him for the AG role.
The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, will lead the department in an acting capacity for now, the president said.
What may turn out to be the most consequential moment for Bondi’s fate was the September social media post from Trump to “Pam,” demanding that she immediately begin prosecuting his adversaries.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Trump wrote.
Bondi obeyed, engineering leadership changes that resulted in the rapid-fire indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Yet both cases were quickly thrown out after a judge ruled Bondi’s handpicked prosecutor was illegally appointed.
Although Bondi pledged during her confirmation hearings not to target Trump’s political enemies, her Justice Department also launched other investigations Trump sought, like probes into Sen. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. But those inquiries never produced the quick action Trump hoped for and have yet to result in any charges.
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who became a spokesperson for Trump during his fight against multiple criminal indictments, never had the full trust of his MAGA base. They noted her silence about the Jan. 6 defendants who attacked the Capitol, even as Trump made pardoning them a feature of his reelection bid. They were confounded by her effort to withhold millions of files related to the sex trafficking case of Jeffrey Epstein after initially vowing to release them. And they lamented that Trump’s first pick for the job, former Rep. Matt Gaetz — a MAGA star — was unable to marshal enough Senate support for the job.
Bondi flubbed the handling of the Epstein files from the outset, managing to amplify interest in the episode from both ends of the political spectrum and embroil Trump in a saga he made clear he wanted to go away. Months of public pressure and scrutiny from lawmakers culminated with House Republicans joining Democrats to subpoena the attorney general, setting her up to discuss the saga under oath.
Just weeks after being confirmed as AG, Bondi spearheaded a made-for-TV stunt at the White House, where right-wing influencers were given binders containing what was billed as the first installment of the Epstein files. The MAGA internet personalities dutifully posed for photos with the binders outside the White House, but the images became like an albatross for Bondi and Trump after it became clear that the documents inside had all been previously released.
Bondi also fanned the controversy by declaring in a Fox News interview last year that a much-vaunted client list for Epstein was “sitting on my desk right now.” Bondi later clarified that she was referring to other Epstein-related materials and no such list existed, but her initial comment only fueled pre-existing suspicions of a cover-up.
As the Epstein imbroglio became white-hot last summer, the Justice Department sought to shift the media spotlight over it to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, but that was only partly successful and may have done little to impact Trump’s attribution of blame for the distracting morass.
Just Wednesday, Bondi and Trump were together publicly just Wednesday at the Supreme Court, as the justices heard arguments about Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship. Bondi’s supporters pointed to their proximity
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