President Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday after a rocky tenure marked by her fumbling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and her perceived failure to effectively carry out his campaign of legal retribution against political rivals.
Bondi will be replaced at least temporarily with her top deputy, Todd Blanche, who was previously Trump’s personal lawyer and drew criticism for an unusual jailhouse meeting with Epstein’s convicted sidekick Ghislaine Maxwell.
“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,” Trump posted on his social media site.
Bondi praised Blanche as “amazing” and vowed to continue supporting Trump from a forthcoming “important private sector role that I am thrilled about.”
Blanche is a candidate to be a permanent replacement, but Trump is considering Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin for the post, three people familiar with the matter said before Bondi’s ouster.
Trump has discussed his ongoing frustration with Bondi over her handing of the Jeffrey Epstein files along with missteps in criminal investigations into Trump’s perceived enemies, the people said.
Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from Long Island who ran a strong losing campaign for governor, has been showered with praise by Trump, who at an event in February described him as “our secret weapon.”
Bondi, a former state attorney general in Florida and a Trump loyalist, becomes the second Trump cabinet member to be ousted after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired last month.
Bondi replaced ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz as Trump’s pick to run the Justice Department after Gaetz was forced to pull the plug on his bid amid questions about his role in a drugs-and-sex scandal.
She quickly launched investigations of several Trump foes, sparking an outcry that the law enforcement agency was being wielded as a tool of revenge to advance the president’s political and personal agenda.
Bondi, 60, has also endured months of scrutiny over the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files that made her the target of angry conservatives and liberals alike.
She infamously summoned right-wing media influencers to a public event where she handed out what she claimed was an initial dossier of Epstein file documents. She later refused to release more documents and backed off a claim she had an Epstein client list.
The stumbles provided ammunition to a bipartisan congressional rebellion that eventually led to overwhelming passage of a bill requiring release of all the files, although the DOJ has been slow to comply.
Under Bondi’s leadership, the department opened investigations into a string of Trump foes, including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan.
The high-profile prosecutions of Comey and James were quickly thrown out by a judge who ruled that the prosecutor who brought the cases was illegally appointed. Other politically charged investigations have either been rejected by grand juries or failed to result in criminal charges.
