Attorney General Pam Bondi emerged from a House Judiciary Committee hearing in February in an upbeat mood after delivering what she believed was her best, which is to say most bombastically defiant, defense of her handling of the release of the Epstein files.
Many others, including some of her allies, thought her testimony — hours of high-volume insults and non sequiturs (“The Dow is over $50,000 now!”) — was a miscalculation that only deepened distrust of Ms. Bondi. She even declined to make eye contact with victims of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who were seated behind her.
When bad reviews started pouring in, Ms. Bondi did not blame herself. Instead, she told an associate that the committee’s Republican chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, had refused to defend her and had enabled Democratic questioners, according to people in her orbit speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Ms. Bondi has long promoted her transparency in the Epstein case, pointing to what she has described as an Eiffel Tower’s worth of documents made public on her watch. And her attack on Democrats landed better with the audience she cares most about, President Trump. But to critics, it was just the latest in more than a year of unforced errors and messaging misfires that have turned a thorny dilemma — how to handle an investigation that has shadowed Mr. Trump — into an enduring Republican political liability.
That is on top of the criticism leveled by Democrats and former Justice Department officials over the past year that she has sacrificed the department’s independence in pursuit of the president’s retribution agenda.
Yet like a radio built to pick only one channel — tuned to Mr. Trump’s demands — Ms. Bondi has gained and maintained her position through her attentiveness, loyalty and obedience. That makes her uniquely vulnerable to shifts in Mr. Trump’s opinion.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has privately sent mixed signals. He has praised her loyalty in public, and he speaks with her several times a week, sometimes to seek advice or temperature-test ideas, a person close to Ms. Bondi said. On Wednesday, she accompanied the president to the Supreme Court to watch arguments in the birthright citizenship case.
But he also has complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and vented about what he sees as the department’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his foes, according to people who have spoken to him recently, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The greatest danger Ms. Bondi now faces, in the view of current and former officials, is the possibility that she has become expendable to Mr. Trump, who was able to quell Republican criticism of his hard-line immigration policy by removing Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary.
Some of the protection Ms. Bondi enjoyed from G.O.P. lawmakers in the wake of Mr. Trump’s unifying victory in 2024 appears to be eroding ahead of the midterm elections, with congressional Republicans increasingly willing to call out the attorney general over what they see as her mishandling of the investigative files.
“We want to know why the D.O.J. is more focused on shielding the powerful than delivering justice,” said Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of Ms. Bondi’s most vocal Republican critics. The Epstein case is “one of the greatest cover-ups in American history,” she added, summing up the sentiments of a segment of the party’s base.
In mid-March, Ms. Mace and four other Republicans on the House Oversight Committee blindsided their own leadership — and Ms. Bondi — by joining Democrats to vote to subpoena her to testify under oath behind closed doors about the Epstein case.
The committee’s Republican chairman, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, scheduled a deposition for April 14. Ms. Bondi has said she would comply with the law, but she and Mr. Comer have been quietly working together to avoid the deposition, even though it is unclear if it is legally possible to withdraw a subpoena, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.
To ease the pressure, Ms. Bondi appeared at the Capitol on March 18 for a briefing with members of the committee. Democrats pelted her with questions, then stormed out, saying her appearance was no substitute for her sworn, transcribed testimony.
Ms. Bondi has been contacting committee Republicans — including Representative Michael Cloud of Texas — hoping to address their concerns without having to do so under oath. Several lawmakers who voted for the subpoena have softened their resolve, including Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Tim Burchett of Tennessee.
“A.G. Bondi has been far more communicative with Congress than her predecessors, and we’re supportive of her leadership,” Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement.
Chad Gilmartin, a Justice Department spokesman, dismissed the idea that his boss had mishandled the Epstein case, and cited her successes in fighting fraud and fentanyl trafficking, helping lower the murder rate, and the administration’s Supreme Court victories.
He accused The New York Times of piecing together rumors “for a story that just isn’t there.”
When a reporter at the Capitol last month asked if she had regrets about the Epstein case, Ms. Bondi accused her predecessors in the George W. Bush, Obama and Biden administrations of not tackling the job earlier.
But Ms. Bondi had no one else to blame for the major mistake she committed after being sworn in early last year. In February 2025, she appeared on Fox News to hype “breaking news” on the Epstein case, while also claiming that she had key documents, including Mr. Epstein’s client list, sitting on her desk.
Soon after, she showed up at a gathering of far-right influencers at the White House, where she handed out half-filled white binders labeled “Epstein Files: Phase 1” that contained virtually no new information, prompting accusations of a cover-up. Her team suggested there might not be a Phase 2.
Several of Ms. Bondi’s friends now describe that episode as a catastrophic miscalculation from which she might never recover.
At first, Ms. Bondi downplayed the long-term political implications of the case, telling one senior official who worked on the investigation that she believed it was an online story of limited interest to the public at large. Nonetheless, responding to growing demands, she oversaw the F.B.I.’s effort to collect and scour the files for any information that could lead to an investigation or charges.
Last July, she issued a joint statement with the F.B.I. concluding that there was no basis for new charges, no “client list,” no evidence that Mr. Epstein had blackmailed “prominent individuals,” and that releasing sealed investigative files from Mr. Epstein’s trial would only endanger the victims.
The backlash among far-right influencers was instant and threatened to sap the president’s support with his base. Ms. Bondi reversed course and reopened the inquiry.
Around that time, Ms. Bondi told Mr. Jordan and other members of the Judiciary Committee that “all that’s left in there is child pornography, and nobody wants to see that,” according to Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky.
The two top F.B.I. officials, Kash Patel, the bureau’s director, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, had been pushing for a much broader release of the Epstein material after finding little in the files that added to what was already widely known about the president’s interactions with Mr. Epstein.
Behind the scenes, Ms. Bondi began butting heads with Mr. Bongino, who repeatedly urged her to release as many documents as possible to stave off a political disaster. Ms. Bondi was considerably more cautious, citing her previous experience as a local prosecutor in Tampa handling trafficking cases, saying that releasing a trove of unredacted documents could reveal details about Mr. Epstein’s victims, including children.
Her conflict with Mr. Bongino escalated into an angry confrontation at the White House last July, when an irate Ms. Bondi accused Mr. Bongino of leaking unflattering information about her to the news media.
By then, a small group of House Republicans began pressing their leadership to pass legislation requiring the release of the files. The bill passed last November.
The maelstrom engulfed Ms. Bondi at a moment when the president was pressuring her to investigate and indict his enemies, and grousing openly about her failure to show results.
By last summer, senior political appointees at the department were quietly discussing the possibility that Mr. Trump would replace Ms. Bondi. The speculation flared again at the end of the year, over concerns that a long-shot bid to impeach the attorney general for failing to release all the Epstein files in accordance with the newly passed law had gained traction. It did not. The rumors receded but have started cropping up again.
While Ms. Bondi’s in-your-face performance before the Judiciary Committee in February was poorly received by many of the Republicans on the panel, Mr. Trump approved.
Inside the White House, Ms. Bondi is regarded as companionable and friendly, albeit prone to missteps. Her longtime friendship with Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, sums up the sour-and-sweet view of the attorney general in the West Wing.
Last year, Ms. Wiles told an interviewer that Ms. Bondi had “completely whiffed” in her initial handling of the Epstein case when she handed out “binders full of nothingness.” But she also recently referred to Ms. Bondi as “my sister,” according to an administration official who spoke to her recently.
“President Trump has the most talented cabinet in American history,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, wrote in an email when asked about Ms. Bondi, without mentioning her by name.
As she demonstrated in her hearing, Ms. Bondi has a volatile streak that can erupt when she feels threatened or disrespected.
She has had a particularly prickly relationship with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, at times vetoing some of her requests to hold news conferences, according to people familiar with their relationship.
But the main source of stress on Ms. Bondi appears to be Mr. Trump himself. He has relentlessly pressured Ms. Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, to go after targets of his choosing even after the failure of cases brought against the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, which were brought over the objections of U.S. attorneys appointed by Mr. Trump.
At a reception for U.S. attorneys last December, Mr. Trump berated the top federal prosecutor in Maryland, Kelly O. Hayes, for not indicting Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and an outspoken critic, for mortgage fraud, as Ms. Bondi and stunned officials looked on, according to a person who attended the event.
Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche have gotten the president’s message. They have stepped up efforts to investigate several other Trump targets, including the Democratic fund-raising group ActBlue and John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director. They have also pushed prosecutors to investigate a former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, whom the president has accused of lying about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, according to two officials briefed on the effort.
An attachment to folders and binders, as reference tools and visual props, has been a trademark since Ms. Bondi’s two terms as Florida attorney general.
But what worked in Tallahassee does not necessarily serve her well in the brighter lights of the nation’s capital, with prying iPhone cameras everywhere.
Ms. Bondi’s staff has warned her to go paperless, but she has been resistant to change. At her hearing before the Judiciary Committee, she had a splay of three binders on the table.
The result has been embarrassing over-the-shoulder shots showing her preparatory materials, including prewritten put-downs of Democratic lawmakers.
In the run-up to the hearing before Mr. Jordan’s committee, Ms. Bondi was particularly tense, and her staff wrangled with Mr. Jordan’s team over minutiae, including the seating chart in the hearing room.
They eventually settled on space for about 40 staff members in the gallery.
Then, at the last minute, Ms. Bondi’s aides questioned the presence of news media n the room, citing security concerns, according to people briefed on the discussions. Committee staff members ignored it.
Reporting was contributed by Alan Feuer from New York, and Tyler Pager, Annie Karni and Catie Edmondson from Washington.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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