(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that Pam Bondi was being ousted as his attorney general in a post on his social media platform, saying she’ll move to a role working in the private sector.
“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,” Trump said in the post.
Trump’s deputy attorney general and former personal attorney Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney aeneral, the president said.
“And our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General,” Trump wrote.
Trump had raised potentially removing Bondi as attorney general in recent discussions with senior administration officials, sources told ABC News on Wednesday, amid months of mounting frustration that the Justice Department isn’t doing enough to target his political opponents for prosecution.
“Over the next month I will be working tirelessly to transition the office of Attorney General to the amazing Todd Blanche before moving to an important private sector role I am thrilled about, and where I will continue fighting for President Trump and this Administration,” Bondi said in a social media post following the announcement.
“Leading President Trump’s historic and highly successful efforts to make America safer and more secure has been the honor of a lifetime, and easily the most consequential first year of the Department of Justice in American history,” Bondi posted.
Blanche previously served as Trump’s defense attorney in the cases brought against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and former special counsel Jack Smith.
He has served as the nation’s No. 2 law enforcement official since being confirmed by the Senate in March of last year, and previously served in the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York.
Like Bondi, he has been vocal about his personal loyalties to President Trump and just last week appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he cheered the purge of prosecutors who previously worked on investigations into Trump and defended the DOJ from criticism by the MAGA base.
“So when people say, ‘Why aren’t you doing more?’ I welcome that criticism,” Blanche said. “Keep on putting pressure on us. Do you think it makes me upset when you go on X and say, ‘Come on, Blanche, why aren’t we doing more?’ You don’t know me. That’s what motivates me.”
The shakeup comes as Democrats and voting rights groups have expressed alarm that the White House may seek to use the DOJ and FBI to intervene in the midterm elections in November.
The president’s announcement brings an end to a rocky tenure for Bondi as the nation’s top law enforcement official, during which she aggressively sought to reshape the Justice Department as an enforcer of Trump’s agenda — repeatedly breaking with institutional norms implemented after the Watergate era that had encouraged independence from the political demands of the White House.
From her first days in office, Bondi emphasized her personal loyalty to Trump and echoed his longstanding grievances with the DOJ and FBI that the president and his allies have long accused of being “weaponized” against him.
During Trump’s first term in office he faced resistance from top officials at the DOJ and FBI against using the vast powers of their agencies to punish the president’s perceived enemies, but Bondi publicly embraced Trump’s demands to launch prosecutions against specific targets — to mixed effect.
The department’s attempts to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James fell apart after a federal judge ruled that the Trump-appointed prosecutor who indicted them was appointed unlawfully. Attempts to revive the case against James were twice rejected by a grand jury, sources previously told ABC News.
A separate effort by the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, to indict six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video urging military service members to refuse to follow unlawful orders was also rejected by a grand jury — despite Trump’s accusation that the group was guilty of “treason.”
Pirro and the department are separately appealing an order from the chief judge in Washington, D.C., that has put on hold their attempt to launch a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, another frequent target of Trump’s ire.
In recent months, Trump has repeatedly vented frustration to aides regarding both the pace and the effectiveness of the Justice Department’s ability to target his foes — concerns he had also conveyed directly to Bondi — according to sources familiar with the matter.
Trump and other senior White House officials have also criticized Bondi’s handling of the DOJ’s files from its investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which has consumed months of media attention and led to widespread backlash from some of Trump’s most devoted supporters.
Annie Farmer, one of the witnesses who testified at the criminal trial of Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021, said in a statement following news of Bondi’s ouster, “This is not about a single person; it is about a government and judicial system that has repeatedly failed Epstein survivors. Regardless of who holds power, survivors deserve accountability, transparency, protection from retaliation, and assurance that those who enabled Epstein, Maxwell, and others will be investigated and, if appropriate, prosecuted.”
Bondi’s appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee in February, in which she repeatedly yelled at lawmakers and sidestepped questions about the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files and other sensitive matters, was also the subject of some criticism at the White House, sources say. Trump posted afterward on social media that Bondi was “fantastic” at the hearing.
Weeks later, a bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Bondi with a demand that she sit for a deposition on the Epstein files in mid-April.
Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia, D-Calif., claimed following Trump’s announcement Thursday that Bondi will still have to appear before the panel.
“The Oversight Committee subpoena is for Pam Bondi, whether she is the Attorney General or not,” Rep. Garcia said in a statement.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray, Lalee Ibssa and James Hill contributed to this report.
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