United States President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, April 2, 2026, amid criticism of Bondi's handling of the Epstein files and her failure to successfully prosecute several perceived Trump political foes.
The Republican president announced the decision in a social media post, saying, "Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year. Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country."
"Bondi 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," Trump added in a Truth Social Post.
Bondi has been a staunch ally of the president but has drawn fire from some Trump supporters for her handling of the release of the Justice Department files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. The Epstein affair has been a major political liability for Trump, who was a long-time friend of the disgraced financier.
The departure of the country's chief law enforcement officer followed months of scrutiny from angry 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.
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.
She ushered in a period of intense turmoil at the department that included the firings of career prosecutors deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump and the resignations of hundreds of other employees. Her departure continues a trend of Justice Department upheaval that has defined Trump’s presidency, as multiple attorneys general across his two terms have either been pushed out or resigned after proving unwilling or unable to meet his demands for the position.
Bondi rejected accusations that she politicised the Justice Department and said her mission was to restore the institution’s credibility after overreach by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration with two federal criminal cases against Trump. Bondi’s defenders have said she worked to refocus the department to better tackle illegal immigration and violent crime and brought much-needed change to an agency they believe unfairly targeted conservatives.
Bondi’s public embrace of the President, however, marked a sharp departure from her predecessors, who generally took pains to maintain an arm’s-length distance from the White House to protect the impartiality of investigations and prosecutions. Bondi postured herself as Trump’s chief supporter and protector, praising and defending him in congressional hearings and placing a banner with his face on the exterior of Justice Department headquarters.
Her departure could lead to a shake-up in strategy at the Justice Department and, potentially, a renewed push to deploy the U.S. legal system against Mr Trump’s targets.
Ms Bondi is the second senior Trump official to be ousted recently. Mr Trump removed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on 5 March following criticism of her management of the agency and Trump’s immigration agenda.
Meanwhile, Trump has designated his former personal lawyer Todd Blanche as her acting replacement at the head of the Justice Department.
Bondi, in a post on X, said serving as attorney general had been “the honor of a lifetime” and said she will “continue fighting for President Trump” in her unspecified new private sector job.
“Over the next month I will be working tirelessly to transition the office of Attorney General to the amazing Todd Blanche,” she said. “I remain eternally grateful for the trust that President Trump placed in me to Make America Safe Again.”
Under Bondi’s leadership, the department opened investigations into a string of Trump foes, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan. The high-profile prosecutions of Comey and James were short-lived as they were quickly thrown out by a judge who ruled that the prosecutor who brought the cases was illegally appointed.
Trump repeatedly publicly praised and defended Bondi, but also showed flashes of impatience with his attorney general’s efforts to meet his demands to prosecute his rivals. In one extraordinary social media post last year, Trump called on Bondi to move quickly to prosecute his foes, including James and Comey, telling her: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”
Bondi oversaw the exodus of thousands of career employees — both through firings and voluntary departures — including lawyers who prosecuted violent attacks on police at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021; environmental, civil rights and ethics enforcers; counterterrorism prosecutors; and others.
It marks the end of a contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the US 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.
