President Donald Trump has been more reluctant to fire top subordinates during his second term than his first. But Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday became the highest-profile cabinet official to get the axe. She led the Justice Department through the Jeffrey Epstein files fiasco and the (mostly failed) use of law enforcement to target Trump’s opponents.
One lesson of her firing is that sycophancy isn’t enough for success.
Bondi was damaged most by her handling of the Epstein files. Intrigue around the dead sex offender’s role in politics helped motivate a segment of Trump’s base in the 2024 election. Bondi duly stoked their anticipation once she got into office. When a Fox anchor asked her in February 2025 if the Justice Department would release “the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” she said “it’s sitting on my desk.” The next week she distributed binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” to influencers at the White House. They turned out not to contain new information.
These theatrics were intended to please the Republican base but ended up hurting her department and the president. The Justice Department concluded in July that there was no further investigative information in the public interest to release, but Bondi’s remarks fueled the impression of a coverup. Congress passed a law forcing the Justice Department to break with investigative norms and publish millions of documents related to Epstein, feeding a media frenzy that annoyed Trump.
Bondi’s handling of lawfare was no less destructive. She inherited a department that had been wielded in the years prior to investigate and prosecute her boss. He wanted revenge, but she proved unwilling or unable to persuade him that this was a legal and political dead end. Instead she obediently supervised politicized cases.
For the most part, they have gone nowhere. Indictments of former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were thrown out. A grand jury refused the Justice Department’s attempt to indict Democratic members of Congress for constitutionally protected speech. The attempt to investigate Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell as part of a campaign to lower interest rates created blowback in the Senate and complicated Trump’s choice of a successor.
The most successful cabinet secretaries don’t come across as mere lackeys for the president. They have a measure of independence. Bondi abandoned the pretense of distance from the White House that attorneys general usually try to maintain, and it wasn’t enough to save her job.
Bondi’s deputy, Todd Blanche, will temporarily take the reins of the Justice Department. The administration has already been trotting him out to clean up messes, including on the Epstein files and the Minneapolis ICE shootings. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, who has presided over successful deregulatory initiatives there, is reportedly a possible Bondi replacement.
He or anyone else who gets the top law enforcement job ought to learn from Bondi’s tenure: The path of least political resistance isn’t necessarily the path to success in Trump’s cabinet. The next attorney general will need to be willing to balance the president’s wishes with independent judgment to steer the Justice Department — an institution that should be at the forefront of protecting individual rights — in a better direction.
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