Bondi's Exit Follows Stumbles Over Epstein Files

President Trump said Thursday that Pam Bondi is out as his attorney general, ending the contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the Justice Department's culture of independence from the White House, oversaw large-scale firings of career employees, and moved aggressively to investigate the president's perceived enemies.

• The announcement follows months of scrutiny over the Justice Department's handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking investigation that made Bondi the target of angry conservatives despite her close relationship with Trump, the AP reports. She also struggled to satisfy Trump's demands to prosecute his political rivals, with multiple investigations rejected by judges or grand juries or yet to produce charges.

• 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's political and personal agenda.
• 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.
• Bondi rejected accusations that she politicized the Justice Department and said her mission was to restore the institution's credibility after overreach by Joe Biden's administration with two federal criminal cases against Trump. Bondi's public embrace of the president, however, marked a sharp departure from her predecessors, who generally took pains to maintain an arm's-length distance from the White House to protect the impartiality of investigations and prosecutions. Bondi positioned herself as Trump's 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.
• "You've turned the People's Department of Justice into Trump's instrument of revenge," Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said at a February hearing. At the same hearing, Bondi responded to a question about Epstein's accomplices by talking about the stock market, saying, "The Dow is up over 50,000 right now."

• Bondi struggled to overcome early stumbles over the Epstein files that angered conservatives eager for government bombshells about the case. She stoked conspiracy theories with a suggestion in a 2025 Fox News Channel interview that Epstein's "client list" was sitting on her desk for review. The department later acknowledged that no such document exists.
• 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.
• 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.
• Despite her loyalty, insiders say Trump had become increasingly frustrated with Bondi. A former White House official tells NBC News that failing to secure indictments "is a problem for job security with the president. No one is more anxious than Trump to get everything done immediately. He's at a stage in life where he realizes that time goes fast. He wants action."
• "Good riddance. Pam Bondi was the wrong choice from the start," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on X. "But the rot at the Department of Justice begins and ends with Donald Trump. As long as his focus is on using DOJ as a tool for revenge and not law enforcement, the cover up of the Epstein files, along with the countless other problems at DOJ, will continue."
• Trump named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former personal lawyer as the acting attorney general, though sources tell the AP he has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick. On X, Blanche praised Bondi for leading the Justice Department "with strength and conviction." "Thank you to President Trump for the trust and the opportunity to serve as Acting Attorney General," he said. "We will continue backing the blue, enforcing the law, and doing everything in our power to keep America safe."