Updated April 2, 2026 at 3:46 PM CDT<\/p>\n
\nPresident Trump announced Thursday that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out from the top job at the Justice Department. Her departure comes amid simmering frustration over her leadership and her handling of the Epstein files.<\/p>\n
\nIn a social media post, Trump called Bondi “a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year.”<\/p>\n
\n“Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900,” Trump said. “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.”<\/p>\n
\nDeputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is Trump’s former personal attorney, will step in to serve as acting attorney general, the president said. In a post on X, Blanche praised Bondi, thanked Trump for the opportunity to serve, and added “we will continue backing the blue, enforcing the law and doing everything in our power to keep America safe.”<\/p>\n
\nIn her own statement on X, Bondi said she was grateful to Trump, and she said she “will continue fighting” for him and his administration.<\/p>\n
\nA longtime Trump loyalist, Bondi is the second member of the president’s Cabinet to be forced out. Her departure comes almost one month after Trump fired Kristi Noem as secretary of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n
\nBondi leaves after a tumultuous 14 months in charge that critics say damaged the Justice Department’s credibility, hollowed out the career ranks and undermined the rule of law.<\/p>\n
\nUnder Bondi, the department jettisoned its decades-old tradition of maintaining independence from the White House, particularly in investigations and prosecutions, to insulate them from partisan politics.<\/p>\n
\nInstead, she used the department’s vast powers to go after the president’s perceived foes. That includes the high-profile cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, which were brought after Trump publicly called on Bondi to prosecute them.<\/p>\n
\nA federal judge later tossed both cases<\/a> after finding the acting U.S. attorney who secured the indictments was unlawfully appointed.<\/p>\n \nOther political opponents of the president or individuals standing in the way of his agenda also have found themselves under DOJ investigation, including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell<\/a>, California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, and former Obama-era intelligence officials James Clapper and John Brennan.<\/p>\n \nBondi also oversaw sweeping changes to the career workforce at the department. The agency fired prosecutors<\/a> and FBI officials who worked on Capitol riot cases or the Trump investigations.<\/p>\n \nThe elite section that prosecutes public corruption<\/a> was gutted; the Civil Rights Division<\/a>, which protects the Constitutional rights of all Americans, experienced a mass exodus of career attorneys who say the division is being turned into an enforcement arm of the White House.<\/p>\n \nStacey Young, a former department attorney, said Bondi “took a sledgehammer to the Justice Department and its workforce.”<\/p>\n \n“DOJ’s independence, integrity, and workforce have degraded more under her leadership than at any other time during the department’s 155-year history,” said Young, who now runs Justice Connection, an organization that supports the DOJ workforce and the rule of law. “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. Replacing her with a more competent Attorney General who \u2014 like her \u2014 believes their sole client is the President and not the country may just make things worse.”<\/p>\n Political firestorm over Epstein files<\/p>\n \nBondi, a former Florida attorney general, has defended her actions. She has portrayed the firings as a necessary house cleaning<\/a> of politicized career officials. She’s also tried to focus on what she views as major accomplishments during her tenure: targeting drug cartels, cracking down on violent crime, and helping in immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n \nBut ultimately, the department’s handling of the files<\/a> related to the investigations of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein played a large role in her downfall.<\/p>\n \nEarly in her tenure, Bondi told Fox News that she had Epstein’s client list “sitting on my desk right now to review.” A few months later, the Justice Department and the FBI said there was no client list<\/a> and that no additional files from the Epstein investigation would be made public.<\/p>\n \nThat touched off a political firestorm and ultimately led Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act<\/a>, which forced the Justice Department to make public all of the Epstein files in its possession.<\/p>\n \nThe department failed to meet the Act’s 30-day deadline to release the materials, fueling frustrations on Capitol Hill, before eventually releasing<\/a> millions of pages of files. Democratic and Republican lawmakers also expressed concerns about heavy redactions<\/a> that were made to many of the documents.<\/p>\n \nLast month, Bondi and Blanche provided a closed-door briefing to the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the Epstein matter. It also has subpoenaed Bondi to appear for a deposition later this month. That interview is now in question.<\/p>\n \nA spokeswoman for the panel said chairman James Comer, R-Ky., will meet with GOP members to discuss next steps. The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, is insistent Bondi still show up, saying in a statement that she remains “legally obligated to appear before our Committee under oath,” and said she will not escape accountability. <\/p>\n Copyright 2026 NPR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Updated April 2, 2026 at 3:46 PM CDT President Trump announced Thursday that Attorney General Pam Bondi is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-361121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}