President Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, removing the nation’s top law enforcement officer after privately venting his frustrations for months over her handling of the Epstein files and her failed efforts to prosecute his political enemies.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump said he was replacing Ms. Bondi with Todd Blanche, her deputy, on an interim basis.
“We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Ms. Bondi is the second cabinet member in recent weeks to lose her job, after Mr. Trump ousted Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, last month.
The firing of Ms. Bondi, 60, ends a turbulent 14-month tenure as attorney general in which she tried desperately to appease a boss who demanded unimpeded control of the Justice Department to pursue politically motivated investigations against targets of his choosing, even when prosecutors warned that there was no evidence to do so.
In the process, Ms. Bondi surrendered much of the department’s historic independence and oversaw the exodus of experienced career officials, leaving the department’s public corruption and national security units, along with many local U.S. attorneys’ offices, weakened and demoralized.
Yet Mr. Trump remained annoyed by Ms. Bondi’s inability to secure indictments of people he referred to as “scum” during a speech in the department’s Great Hall about a year ago.
The president’s support for Ms. Bondi has steadily eroded since last summer, when her early stumbles in managing the release of the Epstein files created a political liability for Mr. Trump among a segment of his supporters. He has also complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and TV surrogate — a role he thought would suit her talents.
Ms. Bondi spent much of the last day making her case to stay in the cabinet, according to two people familiar with the situation. But her team could sense those chances slipping away when Mr. Trump issued only a lukewarm statement when The New York Times requested comment on rumors she was about to be removed.
“Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” he said on Wednesday, a day before he announced that she was fired.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump sent mixed signals, praising her loyalty in public, and he has spoken with her several times a week, sometimes to seek advice or test ideas, a person close to Ms. Bondi said.
On Wednesday, even as Mr. Trump was discussing with aides whether to fire Ms. Bondi, the president traveled with her to the Supreme Court to watch arguments in the case challenging his executive order limiting birthright citizenship. Ms. Bondi was also at the White House on Wednesday evening for Mr. Trump’s address to the nation on the war in Iran.
But he has also expressed continuing dissatisfaction with her performance, and increasingly engaged with her critics inside his circle of advisers.
Sentiment had also been turning against Ms. Bondi among congressional Republicans.
In mid-March, five 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.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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