FILE – Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite, File)<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump said Thursday that Pam Bondi is out as his attorney general, ending the contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the Justice Department\u2019s culture of independence from the White House, oversaw large-scale firings of career employees and moved aggressively to investigate the Republican president\u2019s perceived enemies.<\/p>\n
The announcement follows months of scrutiny over the Justice Department\u2019s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s sex trafficking investigation that made Bondi the target of angry conservatives even with her close relationship with Trump. She also struggled to satisfy Trump\u2019s demands to prosecute his political rivals, with multiple investigations rejected by judges or grand juries or yet to produce charges.<\/p>\n
Trump named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as the acting attorney general, though three people familiar with the matter have said he has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick.<\/p>\n
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, came into office last year pledging that she would not play politics with the Justice Department, but she quickly started investigations of Trump foes, sparking an outcry that the law enforcement agency was being wielded as a tool of revenge to advance the president\u2019s political and personal agenda.<\/p>\n
She ushered in a period of intense turmoil at the department that included the firings of career prosecutors deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump and the resignations of hundreds of other employees. Her departure continues a trend of Justice Department upheaval that has defined Trump\u2019s presidency as multiple attorneys general across his two terms have either been pushed out or resigned after proving unwilling or unable to meet his demands for the position.<\/p>\n
Bondi rejected accusations that she politicized the Justice Department and said her mission was to restore the institution\u2019s credibility after overreach by President Joe Biden\u2019s Democratic administration with two federal criminal cases against Trump. Bondi\u2019s defenders have said she worked to refocus the department to better tackle illegal immigration and violent crime and brought much-needed change to an agency they believe unfairly targeted conservatives.<\/p>\n
Embracing, supporting and protecting the president<\/p>\n
Bondi\u2019s public embrace of the president, however, marked a sharp departure from her predecessors, who generally took pains to maintain an arm\u2019s-length distance from the White House to protect the impartiality of investigations and prosecutions. Bondi postured herself as Trump\u2019s chief supporter and protector, praising and defending him in congressional hearings and placing a banner with his face on the exterior of Justice Department headquarters.<\/p>\n
She called for an end to the \u201cweaponization\u201d of law enforcement she said occurred under the Biden administration, even though Biden\u2019s attorney general, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, the special counsel who produced two cases against Trump, have said they followed the facts, the evidence and the law in their decision-making. Bondi\u2019s critics, meanwhile, said she was the one who had politicized the agency to do the president\u2019s bidding.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve turned the People\u2019s Department of Justice into Trump\u2019s instrument of revenge,\u201d Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary committee, said at a February hearing.<\/p>\n
Bondi delivered a combative performance but few substantive answers at that hearing as she angrily insulted her Democratic questioners with name-calling, praised Trump over the performance of the stock market \u2014 \u201cThe Dow is up over 50,000 right now\u201d \u2014 and openly aligned herself as in sync with a president whom she painted as a victim of past impeachments and investigations.<\/p>\n
Even Republicans began to challenge her, with the Republican-led House Oversight Committee last month issuing a subpoena to her to appear for a closed-door interview about the Epstein files.<\/p>\n
Under Bondi\u2019s leadership, the department opened investigations into a string of Trump foes, including Federal Reserve Chair 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 short-lived as they were quickly thrown out by a judge who ruled that the prosecutor who brought the cases was illegally appointed.<\/p>\n
Trump repeatedly publicly praised and defended Bondi but also showed flashes of impatience with his attorney general\u2019s efforts to meet his demands to prosecute his rivals. In one extraordinary social media post last year, Trump called on Bondi to move quickly to prosecute his foes, including James and Comey, telling her: \u201cWe can\u2019t delay any longer, it\u2019s killing our reputation and credibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bondi oversaw the exodus of thousands of career employees \u2014 both through firings and voluntary departures \u2014 including lawyers who prosecuted violent attacks on police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; environmental, civil rights and ethics enforcers; counterterrorism prosecutors; and others.<\/p>\n
Fumbling the Epstein files<\/p>\n
She struggled to overcome early stumbles over the Epstein files that angered conservatives eager for government bombshells about the case, which has long fascinated conspiracy theorists. She herself had fed the conspiracy theory machine with a suggestion in a 2025 Fox News Channel interview that Epstein\u2019s \u201cclient list\u201d was sitting on her desk for review. The department later acknowledged that no such document exists.<\/p>\n
Bondi was ridiculed over a move to hand out binders of Epstein files to conservative influencers at the White House only for it to be later revealed that the documents included no new revelations. And despite promises that more files were going to become public, the Justice Department in July said no more would be released, prompting Congress to pass a bill to force the agency to do so.<\/p>\n
The Epstein files fumbles led to a stunning public criticism from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, a close friend of Bondi\u2019s, who told Vanity Fair that the attorney general \u201ccompletely whiffed.\u201d The Justice Department\u2019s release of millions of pages of Epstein files did little to tamp down criticism, prompting a House committee with the support of five Republicans to subpoena Bondi to answer questions under oath.<\/p>\n
Bondi, who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, was his second choice to lead the Justice Department, picked for the role after former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida withdrew his name from consideration amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations.<\/p>\n