United States President Donald Trump said Thursday that Pam Bondi is out as his attorney general.
It ends the contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the Justice Department’s culture of independence from the White House, oversaw large-scale firings of career employees and moved aggressively to investigate the Republican president’s perceived enemies.
The departure of the country’s chief law enforcement officer followed months of scrutiny from conservatives over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation and failed efforts to please Trump through unsuccessful efforts to build criminal cases against prominent foes, investigations that in some cases have been rejected by judges or grand juries.
Trump named deputy attorney general Todd Blanche as the acting attorney general, though three people familiar with the matter have said he has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social, adding that she did a “tremendous job” cracking down on crime.
“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.”
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, came into office last year pledging that she would not play politics with the Justice Department, but she quickly started investigations of Trump foes, sparking an outcry that the law enforcement agency was being wielded as a tool of revenge to advance the president’s political and personal agenda.
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