President Donald Trump has sacked Attorney General Pam Bondi, making her the second cabinet official to be dumped within weeks.
The president has chosen Bondi’s deputy Todd Blanche—Trump’s former personal lawyer—as her interim replacement.
“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 Truth Social.
“Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.
“We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General.”
Blanche represented Trump in the New York “hush money” trial, which resulted in the president being found guilty of falsifying business documents to cover up a sex scandal with porn star Stormy Daniels.
But while he is viewed as a staunch loyalist, some insiders have told the Daily Beast that Blanche could be a risk for the permanent position because he is viewed by some as “the face” of the Epstein firestorm.
The former Trump attorney interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell and oversaw her sweetheart prison deal, and has also been publicly prosecuting the case to not release all the files in the department’s possession.
He has also backed the presence of ICE agents at polling stations, a move critics fear could have a chilling effect on voter turnout.
“Why is there an objection to sending ICE officers to polling places?” he asked at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, before accidentally undercutting a Trump narrative: “Illegals can’t vote.”
But Bondi has been under fire within MAGA world for months over everything from her handling of the Epstein files and her lack of “deep state” prosecutions to her epic meltdown at a Congressional hearing last month.
While Trump had publicly praised Bondi as doing a “good job”, the president had become increasingly frustrated with his top law enforcer in recent weeks, complaining about her ability as a communicator and what he sees as the Justice Department’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his enemies.
Bondi’s departure comes a day after she accompanied Trump to the Supreme Court, where he ended up abruptly leaving after his conservative justices did not seem back his push to end birthright citizenship.
It also comes less than a month after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was also fired following a string of scandals, from a taxpayer-funded luxury jet to her alleged affair with her adviser, Corey Lewandowski.
Controversy has dogged Noem ever since, with the MAGA acolyte now at the center of salacious allegations her husband lives a double life where he cross-dresses and chats online with fetish models.
Reports have also emerged that Trump recently polled his advisers about firing a third woman from his cabinet - Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard - with whom he has been at odds over the Iran war.
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, built her national profile as a staunch Trump ally during his first presidency.
She joined his legal team during his first impeachment trial and later became a regular presence in his inner circle, ultimately securing the role of attorney general in 2025.
Her appointment came after Trump’s initial pick, former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration amid a sex scandal involving an underage girl.
Since taking office, the 60-year-old has helped Trump reshape the Justice Department from an independent agency to one that suits his agenda in a way that is unprecedented in American history.
She established “Weaponization Working Group” to review past probes involving Trump, such as the January 6 investigation and the classified documents case. She’s also targeted Trump’s enemies, such as former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Leticia James, former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Democrat Adam Schiff.
But some of Trump’s aides and sections of his base have had been highly critical of the Attorney General, who got off to a rocky start last year after inviting right-wing influencers to a photo-op where they received binders of Epstein documents that were essentially already in the public domain.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was critical of the move - and of Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files more broadly - describing the released documents as “binders of nothingness.”
“And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk,” Wiles lamented in a Vanity Fair interview last year. “There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
The Attorney General also clashed with then FBI deputy director Dan Bongino last year, culminating in a West Wing screaming match in front of Wiles, then deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, and FBI director Kash Patel.
Despite the internal dissatisfaction, Trump has publicly praised Bondi as “a wonderful person” doing “a good job.”
He even praised her after her highly criticized performance before the House Judiciary Committee last month, where she spent most of her testimony yelling at members of Congress, accusing them of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and refusing to answer questions as Jeffrey Epstein’s stunned victims watched in the public gallery.
While Blanche has been named as Bondi’s interim replacement, other names, such as Lee Zeldin, the former New York Congressman who he handpicked to overhaul the Environmental Protection Agency, have also been thrown into the mix.
Speaking at the CPAC last week, Blanche said he was aware of some of the concerns MAGA’s rank-and-file had expressed about the Justice Department, particularly over the lack of prosecutions Bondi had achieved.
“The attorney general Pam Bondi, the president and myself - we are changing things,” he sought to assure the unconvinced crowd.
