Pam Bondi's Rough Ride Comes to an End

President Trump, who stuck with his attorney general for months despite reported dissatisfaction with her performance, cut her loose today.

After a year of turmoil, Pamela Bondi is out as attorney general. The president’s long-rumored dissatisfaction with Bondi finally resulted in her ouster this week; Trump confirmed her firing in a Truth Social post on Thursday afternoon, referring to Bondi as a “Great American Patriot and a loyal friend.” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will fill in as the president considers Bondi’s replacement.

Her dismissal arguably represents the most frustrating chapter of this presidency so far. If you had asked Trump supporters in November 2024 which presidential appointment was the most important for the president to get right, the overwhelming majority would have said the Attorney General. After observing nearly a decade of vicious lawfare, even by Trump’s own Department of Justice during his first term, it was table-turning time for the president and thousands of family members, lawyers, advisors, aides, and voters who had been relentlessly targeted by the DOJ during the Biden regime.

The transition team floated a number of impressive names early on: Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, and former White House counsel Mark Paoletta to name a few. MAGA faithful lined up behind Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman at the time, who voluntarily pulled his name from consideration in anticipation of a bruising, and possibly unsuccessful, confirmation fight.

President Trump then settled on Bondi, a former county prosecutor, Florida Attorney General, and member of his legal team during the first impeachment. Confirmed by the Senate in a 54-46 vote, Bondi took the oath of office in February 2025. While some questioned whether Bondi, a lobbyist and Fox News contributor at the time, had the chops to take over the reins of arguably the most corrupt agency in the federal government, the president appeared to have full faith and confidence in her ability to do so.

Encouraging Signs—and Then, Disaster

She immediately released a series of memos aimed at fulfilling the president’s priorities related to cleaning up the DOJ and bringing accountability for past injustices. Bondi created a “Weaponization Working Group” to investigate Special Counsel Jack Smith, the prosecution of January 6 protesters, and the Biden DOJ’s surveillance of practicing Catholics and parents speaking out at school board meetings. “The reconciliation and restoration of the Department of Justice’s core values can only be accomplished through review and accountability,” Bondi wrote.

That was music to MAGA’s ears. Visions of lawfare perps in handcuffs danced in the collective head of Trump supporters. It was only a matter of time, most believed, until Jack Smith and Merrick Garland, and Chris Wray and Lisa Monaco were hauled before a judge facing numerous federal charges and headed to jail.

Expectations ran high, too high in some instances, in all fairness. Few anticipated the locked-armed resistance by federal judges from coast to coast to halt nearly every presidential policy, which forced Bondi to defend her boss in dozens of unexpected cases. Senate Republicans refused to break protocol, the outdated “blue slip” process, to confirm the president’s nominees for U.S. Attorney in several offices, creating internal chaos and opening the door for Trump-hating judges to instead pick the top prosecutor in their jurisdiction. Activist groups are coaching prospective grand jurors how to reject indictments sought by Bondi’s DOJ, resulting in an unprecedented and politically-damaging number of “no true bills” returned by grand juries in blue cities.

With so many powerful forces working against her—a ruthless entrenched bureaucracy consisting of 100,000 employees spread across 93 U.S. Attorney’s offices, a rogue federal judiciary, spineless Republicans in Congress, and a national news media rooting for her failure—everything had to be flawless. No mistakes could be made—no unforced errors, no gaffes, no embarrassing interviews or appearances. Fair or not, perfection had to be the daily goal.

But within days of her confirmation, Bondi instead pulled a PR stunt that haunts the president to this day: the infamous “Epstein Binder” briefing. On February 27, 2025, Bondi assembled more than a dozen top MAGA influencers at the White House to distribute documents allegedly representing “phase one” of the Epstein files. Most of the material, however, was old news, leading to Democrat-fueled speculation that Bondi planned to run a coverup operation to hide any damaging ties between Epstein and Trump.

Bondi soon raised the stakes, claiming privately and publicly that the FBI was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein with children or involved in child pornography; those files were never identified or released to the extent they even exist.

The missteps produced ammo for the president’s biggest enemies in Congress and the media; even some Republicans made the “Epstein files” a rallying cry, tainting the president’s first-year victories and creating a black cloud that still lingers over the administration. The debacle created internal division, too; Bondi and former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino were involved in a heated clash in the White House last summer over her handling of the files.

“The problem is that she can’t escape Epstein and hasn’t done enough on his enemies to satisfy the president,” one top DOJ official told me. “Now people are just wondering what happens next.”

Wilting Under the Heat

Bondi’s public performances also did not serve the president well. While Trump appreciates fire and feistiness, especially in his defense, the American people still expect the nation’s top law enforcement officials to demonstrate poise and professionalism. Unfortunately, as Bondi increasingly felt the heat, her Congressional appearances became more and more unproductive, even unbecoming. Her shrewish combativeness during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in February produced cringy social media posts that likely contributed to today’s involuntary exit.

But all may have been forgiven had Bondi made significant progress on her “Weaponization Working Group,” which went the same way of the “Weaponization Select Committee” formed by House Republicans in 2023: nowhere. While several J6 and Trump lawfare prosecutors were fired, or forced to resign, and documents have been released providing more insight into the nefarious conduct of Biden DOJ/FBI officials, no one has faced significant criminal liability for their actions.

Sure, James Comey and Tish James had to lawyer up to face relatively minor offenses—and both have been saved so far by the Trump-hating establishment. But bigger fish—particularly Jack Smith and his team (a criminal referral against Smith henchmen Thomas Windom was made in November 2025 but no indictment yet)—remain off the hook.

Bondi is not entirely to blame, but she bears a fair share of it. So, too, does the president for sticking with her as valuable time ticked away. It is not too late to leverage what minimal power the current DOJ has in bringing accountability for what happened to the president, his people, and the country under the previous DOJ. But the sand in the political hourglass is running out. Bondi’s successor must be mistake-free—and work fast.