Trump fires Attorney General Pam Bondi: Reports
U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi speaks with U.S. President Donald Trump while participating in a roundtable discussion with the Fraternal Order of Police at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, June 5, 2025.
Kent Nishimura | Reuters
President Donald Trump has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi. MS Now and other news sources reported.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has been appointed as interim acting attorney general, MS Now reports.
Trump is reportedly considering Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin as Bondi’s replacement.
Bondi’s dismissal follows reports that Trump is increasingly unhappy with Trump’s administration. Ministry of Justice files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the Justice Department’s failure to successfully prosecute several of the president’s political enemies.
And the move comes weeks after Trump fired another cabinet member, Kristi Noem, as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Noem was ousted after two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal agents following outcry over DHS’s aggressive immigration enforcement in Minnesota. Noem was replaced by Markwayne Mullin, who until recently was a U.S. senator representing Oklahoma.
“The sand in the hourglass is about to run out,” a source told MS Now, adding that Trump has been talking to Republicans and their allies about removing Bondi in recent days.
MS Now noted that Bondi’s dismissal has not been officially announced or finalized and is subject to change.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin makes a water policy announcement and holds a signing ceremony with members of the West Virginia Congressional Delegation at EPA headquarters in Washington, DC, USA on February 18, 2025.
Kent Nishimura | Reuters
Representative Nancy Mace, South Carolina Republican a post on x “If reports are true that Lee Zeldin will replace Pam Bondi as attorney general, I would welcome it.”
“Bondi handled the Epstein Files horribly and made this situation much worse for President Trump than it needed to be,” Mace wrote. “I look forward to a new Attorney General.”
Trump has been much more conservative in firing top officials in his second term than in his first term, which was marked by a series of sudden firings, including that of his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions.
Trump fired Sessions in May 2017 after the then-attorney general recused himself from overseeing the DOJ investigation into his contacts with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign, prompting the Justice Department to appoint special counsel Robert Mueller to lead that investigation.
Bondi is thought to have been incompetent in the release of files on Epstein, who years ago was a friend of Trump.
After Trump regained the White House last year, Bondi had initially promised to release DOJ documents on Epstein, whose criminal activities had drawn close attention from the president’s MAGA political base.
He later reneged on that promise by providing Trump-friendly social media influencers with files containing documents that appeared to contain previously public information about Epstein.
Congress then overwhelmingly passed a law requiring the Justice Department to release all its files on Epstein by December 19. Although the Department of Justice had released many documents by this date, it did not manage to release millions more until weeks later, and even then it withheld large numbers of documents.
On March 17, The House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to Bondi. forced him to testify on April 14 about the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files.
Months earlier, on November 24, Bondi and the Justice Department were embarrassed by the dismissal of two federal criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump had pushed Bondi to press charges against Comey and James, who were his enemies.
Comey was accused of making false statements and obstructing his testimony to Congress years ago. James was charged with bank fraud and making a false statement to a financial institution in connection with a mortgage he took out in 2020 to purchase a home.
Both have denied any wrongdoing and said the investigations were politically motivated.
After finding that Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia who obtained the indictments against Comey and James, was invalidly appointed, a federal judge threw out the lawsuits against both of them.
Halligan is one of several top federal prosecutors whose appointments were invalidated during the second Trump administration.
This is developing news. Check back for updates.
