On the short drive from the White House to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Pam Bondi was informed by the president that she was being removed as attorney general.
But for 24 hours, Bondi acted the part.
She emerged from the car smiling and sat next to Donald Trump during the oral arguments on birthright citizenship. Later, she met with a senior prosecutor from Florida to push for charges against one of Trump’s political enemies, and she attended the president’s address to the nation that evening.
Aides insisted that it was “business as usual.”
By mid-Thursday, when news of her ouster had leaked to the press, Bondi was already in Florida for a prescheduled meeting with local sheriffs.
So ended Bondi’s tumultuous 14 months as attorney general. She will leave a Justice Department remolded to Trump’s liking to her second-in-command and the president’s former defense lawyer, Todd Blanche.
Sources close to Bondi said it was hard to pinpoint a specific moment that led to her ultimate demise. Trump for months had been discussing his frustrations with Bondi over what he believed was a failure to aggressively bring cases against his personal and political foes.
She was also dogged by the Epstein files, which proved to be a never-ending headache for the administration and for the president himself as he faced criticism for his own friendship with the convicted sex offender.
The job took a toll on Bondi too, who sources said believed that she was at times being asked to do the impossible.
During Bondi’s time as attorney general, the department did land some cases in court that were pleasing to Trump. Those included the classified documents mishandling indictment of his former national security adviser-turned-critic John Bolton, who continues to fight his charges, and the stymying of the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s own alleged classified document mishandling.
In a post on X Thursday, Bondi said that she is “moving to an important private sector role I am thrilled about.” She will officially leave the department in about one month.
Bondi won Senate confirmation days into the second Trump administration by pledging that she would not make decisions as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer based on politics.
But her first days in office quickly proved the opposite: that she was willing to go where previous attorneys general wouldn’t and mold the Justice Department to a president’s political vision.
In a matter of weeks, Bondi purged the department of career prosecutors whom she perceived as against Trump, his supporters or his agenda, shut down offices whose work touched friends and allies of the White House, and presided over one of the most aggressive litigation strategies on behalf of a president in history.
Bondi’s ouster sparks debate on DOJ’s independence
Criminal investigations into Trump’s adversaries soon followed, some of which were publicly ordered by the president, including against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff.
“We can’t delay any longer,” Trump said on social media in a September 20 post directed to “Pam.” “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
Those investigations faltered, though. Charges against Comey and James were dismissed by a judge who said the prosecutor – personally appointed by Trump – that brought the cases didn’t have that authority to do so. Other cases were refused by grand juries, including one against Democratic lawmakers who posted a video urging service members to disobey illegal orders from the administration.
Cases defending Trump’s policies and executive orders were repeatedly slapped down by trial-level judges, especially those in the first 100 days of the presidency. In many — particularly challenges to Trump’s hardline approach to immigration – the Justice Department pushed for quick appellate court intervention. That was sometimes successful.
Bondi’s shaky track record put her in the hot seat several times throughout the past year, sources previously told CNN. Those tensions exploded in January, when the president lambasted her and a group of US attorneys as weak and ineffective. He came close to firing Bondi then, sources said, but Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles, one of Bondi’s friends since she ran for Florida attorney general in 2010, helped save her temporarily.
Behind the scenes, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin was having regular conversations with the president, seeming to lay the groundwork to take the job if Trump ousted Bondi, according to one source briefed on the matter.
Still, Bondi bent over backwards to satisfy Trump, sources said, particularly in recent weeks as she and Blanche appeared to increase efforts to show the president they were working on his priorities and possibly save her job.
As the president fumed over his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud not being investigated, Bondi allowed prosecutors in Georgia to seek a search warrant to seize ballots from Fulton County election headquarters and tapped former Rep. Dan Bishop to lead all election-related probes across the country.
She offered a private briefing to lawmakers in an attempt to avoid further embarassment over the Epstein saga, but the closed-door meeting went off the rails and democratic lawmakers walked out within a half hour.
Meetings on so-called anti-weaponization efforts increased, as did pressure on prosecutors overseeing investigations that were important to Trump, sources familiar with the matter said.
And this week, Bondi made a last-ditch effort to show Trump she could deliver on prosecutions he wants. She summoned Miami US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones and others from that office overseeing the investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan for a meeting on the timing of the investigation, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Quiñones has promised since December that charges against Brennan could come soon, according to the source, but career prosecutors working on the case have signaled that their work is not nearly complete and a decision on charges remains some time away. They have also cautioned that while the case is not a strong one and could face long odds, particularly since it must be brought in Washington, DC, where grand juries have balked at protections viewed as politicized.
Ty Cobb: Trump fired Bondi because she ‘couldn’t bring Trump the bleeding heads of his enemies on a platter like he wanted’
Shadow of the Epstein files
Bondi’s most serious offense threatened to leave a stain on Trump’s second term: the Epstein files.
The ordeal began soon in her tenure, when Bondi asserted on Fox News that a client list of sex predator Jeffrey Epstein was “sitting on my desk right now.” The comment took the White House by surprise, sources previously told CNN, and Bondi later said she was referring generally to documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.
But the interview had already sparked a firestorm online and fueled expectations from across the aisle that the department was finally ready to release long-rumored evidence that would implicate powerful men who may have abused girls alongside Epstein.
The client list, however, didn’t exist, the department later said, and what began as a primetime flub spiraled into a public relations nightmare. Months of backlash sparked Congress to pass a new law requiring the DOJ to release every document it had related to Epstein, which itself was criticized as being both too expansive and not protective enough for victims.
Administration officials and Republican lawmakers grew frustrated with Bondi’s inability to quiet the public outcries, CNN reported, and the White House temporarily told the attorney general that she could not appear in Fox News interviews, leaving Blanche to handle public messaging and communication with Congress about the release of the records.
Again, Trump privately complained about the attorney general for not being able to put an end to the issue.
Bondi was subpoenaed last month to testify to Congress on her handling of the Epstein files, one of the final blows to her future as attorney general. Despite her firing, she will still have to appear.
In his first public appearance as acting attorney general, Blanche told Fox News Thursday evening that the Epstein files had nothing to do with Bondi’s removal.
“I think that to the extent that the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche said.
Host Jesse Watters laughed, responding, “I’m not sure you totally get what people feel about that.”
CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
