Trump Fires Pam Bondi from Attorney General; Eyes Lee Zeldin as Replacement
By: Sam Massey
President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, confirming the ouster in a Truth Social post Thursday in which he called her “a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend.” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense attorney across several criminal cases, will serve as acting attorney general in the interim.
The dismissal was rather abrupt, with Bondi accompanying Trump to the Supreme Court for oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case that same day and attending his prime-time address on the Iran war that evening, where she was reportedly informed of her firing afterwards.
Bondi’s dismissal follows months of Trump’s growing frustration over her handling of Department of Justice files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the DOJ’s failure to successfully prosecute several of his political enemies. Rep. Seth Moulton suggested that the timing of the firing was not coincidental, pointing out that Bondi was due to be deposed in the House probe related to Epstein. Rep. Nancy Mace was more blunt, writing that Bondi “handled the Epstein Files in a terrible manner and made this situation far worse than it had to be for President Trump.”
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Zeldin has emerged as the leading candidate to take over the department, according to multiple sources, with Trump and the former New York congressman having spoken directly about the position. The attorney general conversation reportedly came up again in the West Wing earlier this week after having briefly surfaced and faded in January during the height of the Epstein controversy. Zeldin, who lost the 2022 New York governor’s race before landing at the EPA, has stayed close to Trump throughout his second term. A Republican source described him as genuinely interested in the role. Confirming any replacement will require Senate approval, a process that could prove complicated given how politically charged the Justice Department has become under Trump’s watch.
Bondi’s tenure left the department significantly altered. She oversaw the mass dismissal of attorneys and FBI agents connected to Trump’s prior prosecutions, and her time in office was accompanied by a broader exodus of career lawyers unwilling to serve under the administration’s direction. Her most visible stumble came in a February 2025 Fox News interview in which she said an Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” only for the department to later assert no such list existed, a moment that damaged her credibility within Trump’s inner circle and with the public simultaneously. Whether Zeldin or another nominee can stabilize a department that has shed institutional knowledge and independence at a historic rate remains the central question hanging over whoever walks through that door next.