President Trump announced Thursday he has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year. Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“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, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General.”
The Justice Department has not responded to request for comment, but Blanche thanked Bondi for her “leadership and friendship” in a post that also thanked Trump.
“Thank you to President Trump for the trust and the opportunity to serve as Acting Attorney General. We will continue backing the blue, enforcing the law, and doing everything in our power to keep America safe,” he wrote on X shortly after Trump’s announcement.
Bondi on Thursday indicated she would not be leaving immediately, writing on X that “over the next month I will be working tirelessly to transition the office” to Blanche.
A fierce defender of the president, she has been under increasing scrutiny due to her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Under her leadership, the Justice Department has also experienced a string of embarrassing losses as prosecutors have failed to successfully mount cases against a number of foes of Trump.
Early in her tenure, Bondi sparked the wrath of the GOP base in organizing a White House meeting to discuss the Epstein files, where she largely released information already available to the public.
She later claimed to have a so-called client list of Epstein’s sitting on her desk, with the Justice Department then swiftly reversing. The department released a memo saying they had no such list while asserting evidence indicated the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.
Even Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair in a series of wide-ranging interviews published last December that Bondi had botched the issue.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said at the time.
The matter has captured the attention of lawmakers who have launched a bipartisan investigation that has come to dominate Congress, including a recent decision by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to subpoena Bondi, a vote that secured the backing of five Republicans.
Even before Bondi’s firing was formally announced, some were celebrating her removal.
“Bondi handled the Epstein Files in a terrible manner and seriously undermined President Trump,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), one of the Republicans who backed the move, said in a statement.
Under Bondi, scores of Justice Department officials were fired, including those that worked on the investigations into Trump as well as some who worked on cases prosecuting the Jan. 6 rioters.
Others left as they argued the mission of the department was turned on its head. That includes numerous attorneys across all its divisions, and former U.S. Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer, who was pressured to restore actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights.
“Pam Bondi took a sledgehammer to the Justice Department and its workforce. DOJ’s independence, integrity, and workforce have degraded more under her leadership than at any other time during the department’s 155-year history. What she destroyed in a year could take decades to rebuild. But we have a President who fired her because she didn’t go far enough,” Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, a network of former DOJ employees, said in a statement.
“Replacing her with a more competent Attorney General who – like her - believes their sole client is the President and not the country may just make things worse. We need the Senate to exercise its constitutional check to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
With Blanche, the department remains headed by a former defense attorney of the president.
Under Bondi, the department pursued – but failed – to score convictions against a number of perceived enemies of Trump.
That includes multiple failures to successfully bring cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). Both were brought after a Trump-hired U.S. attorney left the department over concerns about the case, and judges later found his replacement was not properly authorized to do so, as U.S. attorneys must be confirmed by the Senate. Prosecutors were also recently forced to walk back a case against Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell after a judge threw out subpoenas he determined were issued as part of a pressure campaign.
The department still has a probe going in Florida that is investigating the prior intelligence community review of the 2016 election as well as the two cases against Trump.
Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.) accused Bondi of leading a campaign of “abuse [that] subverts the rule of law and corrodes the Justice Department’s ability to deliver impartial justice.”
He noted Bondi had also overseen the process of dolling out pardons and sentence commutations to a number of Trump allies, as well as the 1,600 people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“This is bigger than one official. President Trump has repeatedly treated the Department of Justice like a political weapon — pressuring prosecutors, rewarding loyalty over independence, and using the machinery of federal law enforcement to pursue vengeance against his perceived enemies while shielding his allies from accountability,” Warner said in a statement.
“That pattern includes efforts to nationalize voting through an executive order that has been widely challenged as an unlawful attempt to override state authority, as well as the Fulton County raid tied to the president’s obsession with losing the 2020 election.”
A number of GOP lawmakers wished her well, however.
“Pam Bondi is a great friend and one of the best lawyers I’ve ever met. She did an incredible job as Florida’s Attorney General when I was Governor, and she has been an incredible U.S. Attorney General,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in a statement.
Other members noted that Bondi will still face scrutiny in Congress, where her deposition has been set for April 14.
“The DOJ still hasn’t complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which is why we had no choice but to subpoena her, and because of our push, she will be appearing before the Oversight Committee in two weeks,” Mace said.
“Whether it’s spying on the search history of Members of Congress who are simply seeking answers, claiming all files have been released while key evidence remains hidden, or stonewalling every effort to hold the guilty accountable, the American people deserve an Attorney General who is transparent and delivers real accountability.”
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on Oversight, accused Bondi of “leading a White House cover-up of the Epstein files. She has weaponized the Department of Justice to protect Donald Trump and put survivors in harm’s way by exposing their identities.”
“She will not escape accountability and remains legally obligated to appear before our Committee under oath. She must answer for her mishandling of the Epstein files and the special treatment she has given Ghislaine Maxwell,” he said in a statement, referring to Epstein’s close associate.
“Oversight Democrats have been leading serious investigations into Bondi and Secretary Kristi Noem. If they think we are moving on because they were fired, they are gravely mistaken.”
Bondi is the second Cabinet official to be ousted by Trump, with the president last month firing then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
This story was updated at 3:24 p.m.
