Bondi’s stormy tenure ends with her dismissal

Pam Bondi’s loyalty to President Trump wasn’t enough to save her.

She constantly praised him during press conferences. She was combative in congressional hearings where she defended him and even lauded the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

But he still fired her Thursday after 14 months on the job, leaving her with one of the shortest tenures of an official confirmed to the office.

Sources say everything from her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files to a lack of success in prosecuting his enemies all soured Trump on Bondi, with whom he had worked since she defended him in some of his cases challenging the 2020 election.

The second Cabinet official to be fired by Trump in the span of a month, her exit ends a stormy term, one seen by her critics as being defined by tailoring the Justice Department to pursue the president’s enemies.

“Pam Bondi used the machinery of federal law enforcement not to pursue justice, but to carry out political vendettas at the direction of the President,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that remarked on Bondi’s “humiliating subservience to Trump.” 

“The Attorney General has the best lawyer’s job in America. The mission is justice, and the clients are the American people. But Pam Bondi abandoned that mission, indeed never accepted it. She never acted as anything but Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense and personal injury attorney, transforming the people’s Department of Justice into the President’s private instrument of vengeance, targeting his critics with a bureaucracy of vendetta while canceling out justice for his favored political friends and allies.”

Even just hours before she was fired, Trump issued a statement saying, “Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job.”

But in some ways, Trump’s recent criticism of Bondi was direct. In September, he addressed a public call to speed up prosecution of his enemies to her directly, complaining “nothing is being done.”

In various districts across the country, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has indeed pursued Trump’s perceived enemies.

The DOJ has brought charges against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and even Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton. It has also brought charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), accusing her of assaulting law enforcement with her forearms in a chaotic scrum with immigration officers outside a detention center.

And it’s clear they’ve been investigating others, like Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and former CIA Director James Clapper.

However, the cases that have been brought by DOJ have largely involved embarrassing failures. 

A federal judge in Virginia threw out the cases against Comey and James, finding the president did not properly replace the U.S. attorney who resigned over doubts about bringing the charges.

Prosecutors were also recently forced to walk back a case against Federal Reserve board chair Jerome Powell after a judge threw out subpoenas he determined were issued as part of a pressure campaign.

To those invested in the Justice Department as an institution, Bondi has fundamentally turned the department’s mission on its head.

DOJ has walked away from police excessive force cases, while its Civil Rights Division has instead turned its attention to seeking voter registration information from states and suing a number of schools and universities.

It has also reversed course on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutions, pardoning or commuting the sentences of the 1,600 rioters who stormed the Capitol, while separately giving the reprieve to a number of other Trump allies.

Under Bondi, scores of Justice Department officials were fired, including those who worked on the investigations into Trump as well as some who worked on cases prosecuting the Jan. 6 rioters.

According to the Justice Connection, a DOJ alumni group, some 16,000 DOJ workers have left the department under Trump and Bondi.

“Pam Bondi took a sledgehammer to the Justice Department and its workforce. DOJ’s independence, integrity, and workforce have degraded more under her leadership than at any other time during the department’s 155-year history. 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,” the group’s founder, Stacey Young, said in a statement.

“Replacing her with a more competent Attorney General who — like her — believes their sole client is the President and not the country may just make things worse. We need the Senate to exercise its constitutional check to ensure that doesn’t happen.” 

The Epstein files have also been their own months-long headache for Bondi, a matter that also has continued to put the microscope on Trump.

Bondi stepped into trouble from the outset of her involvement, claiming to have the client list of the convicted sex offender sitting on her desk, only to have the department turn around and release a memo saying no such document existed.

Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles previously accused Bondi of having “completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this.”

That targeted group has come to include both Democrats and Republicans in Congress who voted to release the files, including members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee who have since voted to subpoena Bondi.

With Bondi removed, the panel has already been bickering about whether she will still need to appear for the closed-door deposition slated for April 14.

The probe has now emerged as one of the primary investigations in Congress, and it’s one that continues to exert pressure on Trump.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the Oversight Committee, is among the Democrats who continually accuse Bondi of mounting an Epstein files cover-up designed to conceal Trump’s involvement.

But Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files has also earned her GOP enemies.

When appearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Bondi was spotted with what appeared to be the search histories of members who had come to review unredacted versions of the files, enraging several Republicans alongside Democrats and even earning a rare rebuke from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who introduced the measure to subpoena Bondi, noted the episode in cheering the attorney general’s dismissal.

“Whether it’s spying on the search history of Members of Congress who are simply seeking answers, claiming all files have been released while key evidence remains hidden, or stonewalling every effort to hold the guilty accountable, the American people deserve an Attorney General who is transparent and delivers real accountability,” Mace said in a statement.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who backed the subpoena, also appeared to poke fun at Bondi, who, when appearing before the House Judiciary Committee, dismissed a question about the Epstein files by noting the Dow was up to more than 50,000.

“Dow fell below 50,000?” Boebert asked Thursday.

Bondi also has her defenders, with a number of GOP members wishing her well.

“Pam Bondi is a great friend and one of the best lawyers I’ve ever met. She did an incredible job as Florida’s Attorney General when I was Governor, and she has been an incredible U.S. Attorney General,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in a statement.

Reports also swirled Thursday that Trump was furious that Bondi had allegedly tipped off Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) about FBI plans to release files on him.

Swalwell, however, denied that Bondi offered any assistance to him, a key figure in Trump’s first impeachment.

“We had no heads-up by anyone in the administration. None,” he said in a statement.

“These stories would be laughable if not so outrageous. An administration that is now at 33% approval is looking to blame anyone but the right people — themselves.”

Bondi said Thursday that over the next month she “will be working tirelessly to transition the office” to her deputy, Todd Blanche, who is also a former Trump defense attorney.

It remains unclear whom Trump will nominate to succeed her.

Bondi’s booting did not appear to surprise Anthony Coley, a former spokesman for the DOJ under the Obama administration.

“Trump discards loyalists the moment they won’t bend the law or can’t deliver what the courts won’t allow,” he wrote on the social platform X before going on to list Trump’s dismissed former attorneys general and vice presidents.

“[Jeff] Sessions. [Bill] Barr. [Mike] Pence. etc. Now Pam Bondi.” 

“The pattern never changes,” he said. “Only the names do.”

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