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Donald Trump has fired US attorney-general Pam Bondi following mounting pressure from the White House and the Republican Party over her handling of files related to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Her removal marks the second high-profile ousting from the president’s cabinet this year after Kristi Noem was fired as secretary of homeland security last month and replaced by Markwayne Mullin.
“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,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social on Thursday.
Bondi, a loyalist who helped defend Trump in his first impeachment trial in 2020 and defended his efforts to challenge the outcome of that year’s presidential election, had in recent months come under fire from many within the president’s coalition over her handling of the Epstein affair.
Her department initially missed a deadline set by Congress for the release of all the files related to the late sex offender and then botched initial attempts to redact the documents, inadvertently exposing the names of some victims.
In a sign of the simmering discontent, the Republican-led House oversight committee last month voted to subpoena Bondi in an attempt to force her to answer questions about documents relating to the Epstein files.
Bondi also faced pressure from Trump for failing to aggressively pursue his political enemies.
In a social media post last year, the president appeared to address her directly, asking why “nothing is being done” to prosecute New York attorney-general Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey and Democratic senator Adam Schiff.
“They’re all guilty as hell,” Trump wrote. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice . . . JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
The Department of Justice subsequently indicted Comey and James, but both cases were thrown out by federal judges who ruled that prosecutors chosen by Bondi had been illegally appointed.
Bondi’s temporary replacement, Todd Blanche, acted as Trump’s personal lawyer in several of the cases brought against him by the DoJ under his predecessor, Joe Biden, and state prosecutors.
As deputy attorney-general, Blanche has taken aggressive stances, railing against so-called activist judges who rule against the Trump administration and firing career prosecutors who refuse to defend the government’s immigration crackdown in court.
The DoJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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