President Trump ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi, ending a yearlong tenure atop the Justice Department marked by failed efforts to prosecute his favored targets and a view by the president and his advisers that she mismanaged the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump wrote on social media on Thursday afternoon. The president said Bondi would soon transition to a “much needed and important new job in the private sector.” He didn’t provide details on her new job.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer for Trump who was confirmed last year to the second-ranking Justice Department role, will take over on an acting basis. “Pam Bondi led this Department with strength and conviction and I’m grateful for her leadership and friendship,” Blanche said in a social-media post.
At Justice Department, Bondi tried to deliver on president’s priorities but ultimately failed to appease him
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Bondi presided over a turbulent period at the Justice Department, as she worked to make an agency that historically had operated independently of presidential influence deliver on Trump’s priorities. She took steps that his first-term attorneys general had refused to take, including attempting to prosecute his perceived enemies and hunting for evidence that he beat former President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Bondi oversaw the firings and forced departures of scores of prosecutors and other employees who investigated Trump and his allies in recent years. She even placed a large banner of Trump’s face on the outside of the Justice Department.
Trump has nevertheless privately complained for months about her, describing her as weak and ineffective and saying she had moved too slowly to bring criminal cases against those he saw as adversaries.
In September, Trump singled out James Comey, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and New York Attorney General Letitia James as targets for prosecution in a
social-media post he intended as a private message to Bondi pressuring her to bring cases. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote.
Days later, the Justice Department
secured an indictment of Comey charging him with obstruction and lying to Congress. The department later
brought charges against James. A federal judge dismissed both cases last year after ruling that the Trump-appointed prosecutor behind them was unlawfully installed in the role.
Which brings us to Epstein, where
Trump blamed Bondi’s handling of FBI files related to Epstein, the convicted sex offender, for creating months of political and personal headaches for him. Facing sustained bipartisan criticism, Bondi was
subpoenaed by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee earlier this month to sit for a closed-door deposition in April.
The president weighed firing her in January but ultimately was persuaded not to do so, people familiar with the matter said.