Trump Fires Bondi From AG Post         04/02 12:53

   President Donald Trump said Thursday that Pam Bondi is out as his attorney 
general, ending 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.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump said Thursday that Pam Bondi is 
out as his attorney general, ending 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 announcement follows months of scrutiny over the Justice Department's 
handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking investigation 
that made Bondi the target of angry conservatives even with her close 
relationship with Trump. She also struggled to satisfy Trump's demands to 
prosecute his political rivals, with multiple investigations rejected by judges 
or grand juries or yet to produce charges.

   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.

   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 politicized 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.

   Embracing, supporting and protecting the president

   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.

   She called for an end to the "weaponization" of law enforcement she said 
occurred under the Biden administration, even though Biden's attorney general, 
Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, the special counsel who produced two cases 
against Trump, have said they followed the facts, the evidence and the law in 
their decision-making. Bondi's critics, meanwhile, said she was the one who had 
politicized the agency to do the president's bidding.

   "You've turned the People's Department of Justice into Trump's instrument of 
revenge," Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House 
Judiciary committee, said at a February hearing.

   Bondi delivered a combative performance but few substantive answers at that 
hearing as she angrily insulted her Democratic questioners with name-calling, 
praised Trump over the performance of the stock market -- "The Dow is up over 
50,000 right now" --- and openly aligned herself as in sync with a president 
whom she painted as a victim of past impeachments and investigations.

   Even Republicans began to challenge her, with the Republican-led House 
Oversight Committee last month issuing a subpoena to her to appear for a 
closed-door interview about the Epstein files.

   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 U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; environmental, civil 
rights and ethics enforcers; counterterrorism prosecutors; and others.

   Fumbling the Epstein files

   She struggled to overcome early stumbles over the Epstein files that angered 
conservatives eager for government bombshells about the case, which has long 
fascinated conspiracy theorists. She herself had fed the conspiracy theory 
machine with a suggestion in a 2025 Fox News Channel interview that Epstein's 
"client list" was sitting on her desk for review. The department later 
acknowledged that no such document exists.

   Bondi was ridiculed over a move to hand out binders of Epstein files to 
conservative influencers at the White House only for it to be later revealed 
that the documents included no new revelations. And despite promises that more 
files were going to become public, the Justice Department in July said no more 
would be released, prompting Congress to pass a bill to force the agency to do 
so.

   The Epstein files fumbles led to a stunning public criticism from White 
House chief of staff Susie Wiles, a close friend of Bondi's, who told Vanity 
Fair that the attorney general "completely whiffed." The Justice Department's 
release of millions of pages of Epstein files did little to tamp down 
criticism, prompting a House committee with the support of five Republicans to 
subpoena Bondi to answer questions under oath.

   Bondi, who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, was his second 
choice to lead the Justice Department, picked for the role after former Rep. 
Matt Gaetz of Florida withdrew his name from consideration amid scrutiny over 
sex trafficking allegations.