The attorney general change announced by President Donald Trump on Thursday closed out Pam Bondi’s roughly yearlong tenure as the Justice Department’s top lawyer, an assignment she entered after pledging she would not “play politics” with the department. Trump said Bondi was out as attorney general and described her as a “Great American Patriot” and “a loyal friend” in a statement announcing the change. Trump also said Bondi would move to a new job in the private sector, though he did not specify when she would start it.
In the same announcement, Trump named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to serve as acting attorney general, according to the Associated Press. A separate report from the AP said three people familiar with the matter described Blanche as the acting attorney general while noting that Trump has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick. Bondi, for her part, said in her own statement that taking the job had been “the honor of a lifetime” and said she would spend the next month transitioning the role to Blanche.
Bondi took office about 14 months ago, but the AP described her tenure as contentious and marked by upheaval inside the Justice Department. According to the AP, Bondi oversaw large-scale personnel changes, including firings and departures, and moved aggressively to investigate Trump’s perceived enemies. The report said her approach departed sharply from prior attorney generals who generally tried to maintain an arm’s-length distance from the White House to protect the impartiality of investigations and prosecutions.
The AP said that bondi’s defenders pointed to a reorientation toward illegal immigration and violent crime, while critics said she politicized the agency and used the Justice Department to advance Trump’s personal and political interests. Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, criticized her in an AP account, calling Bondi’s tenure an “unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department” that brought “our nation’s rule of law to its knees.” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in February that Bondi had “turned the People’s Department of Justice into Trump’s instrument of revenge,” according to the AP.
Within the same string of scrutiny, the Associated Press said lawmakers and others focused on the Justice Department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, a sex-trafficking investigation that has long attracted intense public attention. The AP described months of scrutiny over how the department handled Epstein-related materials and said Trump’s frustration grew as Bondi failed to meet what the AP described as Trump’s demands for criminal cases against adversaries. The AP also described how Bondi’s efforts in this area ran into repeated setbacks, including an early misstep involving Epstein file “client list” claims and later acknowledgment that no such document exists.
The Epstein-related criticism escalated into public confrontations and congressional pressure, the AP reported. The department later handed out binders of Epstein files to conservative influencers at the White House, a move that the AP said drew ridicule when it emerged the documents contained no new revelations. The AP further said that despite promises more records would be made public, the Justice Department said in July that no more would be released, prompting Congress to pass a bill to force additional releases; the department ultimately said it complied by releasing millions of more records.
The AP also described Bondi’s approach to public posture and communications, including praise of Trump at White House events and congressional hearings and a banner with Trump’s face on the Justice Department headquarters exterior. It said Bondi called for an end to “weaponization” of law enforcement that she said occurred under the Biden administration, and it said Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, and special counsel Jack Smith had said they followed the facts, evidence and law in decisions involving Trump. The AP said bondi’s critics countered that Bondi was the one who politicized the agency, while Republicans also began challenging her.
The Associated Press said even Republicans moved to demand testimony, with the GOP-led House Oversight Committee issuing a subpoena last month for Bondi to appear for a closed-door interview about Epstein files. The AP also said the Justice Department opened investigations into a range of Trump’s perceived foes, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, though the AP reported that the high-profile prosecutions of Comey and James were short-lived after a judge ruled the prosecutor who brought the cases was illegally appointed.
In the final days of Bondi’s tenure, the AP report also pointed to impatience from Trump, describing a social media post last year in which Trump urged Bondi to move quickly to prosecute his foes and said, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.” The AP said Trump publicly praised and defended Bondi while also showing flashes of impatience, and it described Bondi’s departure as following months of scrutiny and private discussions that turned toward firing her. The AP credited staff writers Matthew Daly in Washington and Jennifer Peltz in New York.