{"id":379910,"date":"2026-04-03T12:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/379910\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T12:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:04:13","slug":"trumps-decision-to-fire-devoted-pam-bondi-reboots-focus-on-epstein-files-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/379910\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s decision to fire devoted Pam Bondi reboots focus on Epstein files \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a passage in Bring Up the Bodies, the second of Hilary Mantel\u2019s trilogy on Henry VIII\u2019s court, where Thomas Cromwell offers a chilling reflection on the reality of appeasing a vain, capricious and frustrated king with a fondness for the guillotine.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it\u2019s like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you\u2019re thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it went for Pam Bondi<\/a>, the attorney general who was brusquely fired from her role by Donald Trump<\/a> on Thursday in Washington. No member of his executive had laughed as hard at the president\u2019s cabinet table sit-down comedic routines as Bondi had; none had gone to such lengths to please him whether through stony denials in front of several committees on Capitol Hill to her shocking \u2013 and ultimately costly \u2013 willingness to denounce two Americans killed by Ice (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) agents in appalling language. <\/p>\n

None of it mattered. In the eyes of the president, Bondi had, over the course of the last eight months, lost control of the narrative around the Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> files. She had failed in her role as head of the department of justice to prosecute the president\u2019s enemies, including James Comey, the FBI director in his first term, and John Bolton, formerly his national security adviser and now his most reliably embittered critic in frequent broadcast news appearances.<\/p>\n

A pattern has emerged of Trump\u2019s former associates and friends suddenly seeing the light after political estrangements: Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Georgia representative who abruptly resigned her seat after a spectacularly public war of words with the president, again over the subject of the Epstein files released, has now joined the disenchanted. Will Bondi?<\/p>\n

As the president broke the news to the nation \u2013 if not Bondi herself \u2013 on Truth Social he wrapped the hammer in velvet, describing her as a \u201cloyal friend who faithfully served as my attorney general over the last year\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector,\u201d he continued. <\/p>\n

Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney general. Bondi becomes the second secretary \u2013 and woman cabinet member \u2013 to be removed from office, following the demotion of Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security last month.<\/p>\n

\"PamPam Bondi with president Donald Trump. Photograph: Evan Vucci\/AP <\/p>\n

Bondi vowed through her social media to \u201cwork tirelessly\u201d to facilitate Blanche\u2019s ease in replacing her and said she was \u201cthrilled\u201d at the prospect of the yet-to-be-defined private sector role. <\/p>\n

But even if she is done with the department of justice, it may not be done with her. Last month, five House Republicans on the oversight committee \u2013 Nancy Mace (South Carolina), Tim Burchett (Tennessee), Lauren Boebert (Colorado), Michael Cloud (Texas) and Scott Perry (Pennsylvania) \u2013 voted with Democratic members to subpoena Bondi to testify before them. Her deposition is scheduled for April 14th.<\/p>\n

Democratic ranking member Robert Garcia responded to news of Bondi\u2019s firing with a statement declaring that she had been leading a White House cover-up of the Epstein files and \u201cweaponised\u201d the department of justice to protect Trump and put survivors in harm\u2019s way. Members will also seek to question her about the \u201cinexplicable\u201d preferential prison transfer treatment given to Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of London newspaper baron Robert Maxwell and the only person to stand trial for her part in Epstein\u2019s trafficking and sexual abuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cOversight Democrats have been leading serious investigations into Bondi and secretary Kristi Noem,\u201d Garcia said in a statement. \u201cIf they think we are moving on because they were fired, they are gravely mistaken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the dismal month of speculation and uncertainty since the Trump administration began its war with Iran in a mood of gleeful ebullience, one of many theories was floated: that it was a grand spectacle to distract from the endless demand for more transparency on the Epstein files. It unquestionably had the effect of pushing the Epstein story to the fringes of Democratic attack points and from the headlines. The irony is that Trump\u2019s decision to fire Bondi has rebooted the public focus on that scandal.<\/p>\n

On Bondi\u2019s last full day in the job, she accompanied the president to the US supreme court to hear arguments on the case through which the administration would end birthright citizenship. The scepticism with which even chief justice John Roberts remarked on the nuances of the arguments did not bode well for the administration. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Trump\u2019s attempt to narrow who qualifies as American strains an already fragile relationshipOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

On Wednesday evening, she sat among cabinet members to listen to Trump\u2019s nine o\u2019clock national address on the Iranian war. The following morning, the markets opened with renewed gloom. Trump\u2019s address had offered no reassurance and no news, deepening the sense that his administration has charged into a hostile situation having devised no clear plan as to how to get out. Fuel price hikes had become the dominant talking point of his second term. His personal approval rating had fallen to a low of 37 per cent. Like all reality shows, it was time to change up the support cast.<\/p>\n

A New York Times investigation published last November interviewed some 60 of the former department of justice attorneys who either resigned or were fired over the course of Bondi\u2019s wayward leadership and they spoke of pressure to drop certain cases for political reasons while pursuing insubstantial investigations. A spokesperson dismissed the Times\u2019 request for comment, describing the interviews as a \u201cuseless collection of recycled, debunked, hearsay from disgruntled former employees\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now, Bondi joins the ranks of the discarded.<\/p>\n

Just over a month has passed since she confronted Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House judiciary committee, in a fiery exchange during which she told him: \u201cYou don\u2019t tell me anything, you washed-up loser lawyer. Not even a lawyer.\u201d Her stonewalling and arrogance incensed Democrats and was surely also intended to show her president the limitless extent of her loyalty. Rumours that her days were numbered were rife by then. Those claws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a passage in Bring Up the Bodies, the second of Hilary Mantel\u2019s trilogy on Henry VIII\u2019s court,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[969,93,61,60,11111,51251,282,90],"class_list":{"0":"post-379910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jeffrey-epstein","13":"tag-pam-bondi","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}