Donald Trump has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi after a tumultuous 14 months leading a radically transformed and politically driven Department of Justice.
Trump’s former criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney general after Bondi’s departure.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump announced on Truth Social.
“Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900,” he wrote. “We love Pam, and she will 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 ousting follows bipartisan outrage over her handling of investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and the release of millions of files connected to the late sex offender. Trump appears to have lost confidence in Bondi’s leadership after the scandal blew up into a massive political liability for the president and his allies.
The president has also publicly raged against the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute his political enemies after the president demanded their imprisonment, as cases against former FBI director James Comey and the New York Attorney General Letitia James fell apart in court.
Trump, who repeatedly praises Bondi and even called her a “wonderful person” who is “doing a good job” up until the moment he announced her departure, has been reluctant to remove members of his Cabinet within the first years of his chaotic second stint at the White House after his first was marked by a rapid series of exits.
But Bondi’s firing, days before her scheduled testimony to members of Congress over Epstein investigations, follows the president’s removal of now-former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the relatively smooth transfer of the role to Markwayne Mullin.
Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman who is currently the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has also reportedly been considered for attorney general after Bondi’s exit.
“Pam Bondi led this Department with strength and conviction and I’m grateful for her leadership and friendship,” Blanche said in a statement.
“Thank you to President Trump for the trust and the opportunity to serve as Acting Attorney General,” he said. “We will continue backing the blue, enforcing the law, and doing everything in our power to keep America safe.”
Bondi, among Trump’s former personal attorneys who later joined his administration, was Trump’s second choice for the job. He initially nominated former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew his nomination eight days later after allegations of sexual misconduct involving a 17-year-old girl and illicit drug use fueled doubts that he make it through a Senate nomination process.
Since entering office last February, Bondi has overseen one of the most chaotic periods at the Justice Department in modern history and obliterated the agency’s historic independence from the White House. A massive banner with a picture of Trump’s face was unfurled outside the agency’s headquarters.
Dozens of career prosecutors and law enforcement agents were forced out or fired for their connections to Trump’s own criminal cases, federal judges have issued countless rebukes against the Justice Department’s evasion of court orders, and thousands of criminal prosecutions were abandoned in the apparent pursuit of the president’s sweeping efforts to arrest and deport tens of thousands of people from the country instead.
The DOJ’s storied Civil Rights Division effectively abandoned its historic task of combatting discrimination against marginalized groups to instead pursue cases against states and institutions allegedly violating the president’s anti-transgender and anti-diversity mandates. The division also dropped investigations into local police departments for civil rights abuses.
Trump, who condemned what he saw was a “weaponized” Justice Department under his predecessor Joe Biden, campaigned on a promise of “retribution” against his perceived political enemies who later became the Justice Department’s targets.
The president pardoned hundreds of people charged in connection with the January 6 attack on his first day in office, eliminating the largest-ever investigation in Justice Department history with the stroke of a pen, which Bondi has defended. The Justice Department later launched several criminal investigations fueled by the president’s baseless allegations that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” against him and “stolen” from him.
Her fierce defense of the president’s agenda boiled over into shouting matches with lawmakers in a series of volatile congressional hearings in recent months.
In February, she deflected questions about Epstein to talk about the stock market and repeatedly chastised and insulted Democrats. “The Dow is over 50,000 right now,” she told the House Judiciary Committee after she was questioned about a lack of indictments against Epstein’s co-conspirators.
The Nasdaq is “smashing records” and Americans’ retirement accounts are “booming,” she said. “That’s what we should be talking about.”
This is a developing story
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