Trump is firing Pam Bondi as attorney general, sources say

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Pam Bondi has been fired, a senior administration official and a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.

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President Donald Trump has grown “very frustrated” with Bondi in recent days, a person familiar with the White House discussions said, adding that while he likes him as a person, he doesn’t think he’s “worked on his vision” as much as he wants.

According to a source familiar with the decision, Todd Blanche will be acting attorney general, effective immediately.

Bondi is the second member of the Cabinet to be fired by the president. Kristi Noem was fired last month as secretary of homeland security and shares Bondi’s pedigree. NBC News reported that Trump grew increasingly frustrated with Noem, but his performance at two congressional hearings ultimately cost him his job.

Trump chose Bondi, a longtime loyalist, to lead the Justice Department after former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew as a nominee.

Bondi had a long relationship with Trump. During the 2016 Republican National Convention, he joined chants of “lock up” against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then became part of Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial. After Trump lost the 2020 election, he participated in efforts to overturn the results, falsely claiming that he “won Pennsylvania.”

“For too long, the federal Justice Department has been outfitted by me and other Republicans — that’s not the case anymore,” Trump said on Truth Social when he was nominated. “Pam will refocus the DOJ on its mission of fighting crime, and making America safe again.”

Two people familiar with the president’s frustrations told NBC News that Trump and Bondi had a confrontation at the White House last week, though they did not specify what it was about.

Bondi accompanied the president Wednesday to the Supreme Court for oral arguments in the birthright case, and attended his first White House speech on the Iran war.

As attorney general, Bondi oversaw the firing of several attorneys and FBI agents arrested in the Trump prosecution. His time was also marked by the voluntary departure of many lawyers, which left the department with very few employees focused on law and not politics.

He has also overseen many of the Trump administration’s priorities, cutting police department investigations and reorganizing the department to focus on what are considered “weapon” investigations of the Justice Department, as well as voter fraud, albeit rare.

But under his leadership, the Justice Department has struggled to successfully bring charges against Trump’s political enemies, with the president himself often linking the charges to his public statements. In February, as NBC News first reported, the Justice Department failed to indict six members of Congress over a social media video in which they told members of the military and intelligence communities that they should not obey illegal orders.

Changing the leadership of the Department of Justice does not guarantee the president the result he wants, since the courts have so far largely blocked the administration’s efforts to go after his enemies, and Congress successfully sought and won the release of DOJ files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Justice Department’s investigation into the Federal Reserve and Chairman Jerome Powell was blocked by a judge, and charges were dropped against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after the judge ruled that the US attorney was improperly appointed.

Some of Trump’s allies are also frustrated by Bondi’s handling of millions of documents released under congressional law regarding the Epstein files.

Appearing before the House Oversight Committee in February, Bondi praised the department’s efforts to comply with the act.

But many Epstein survivors and members of Congress have criticized the department’s handling of the files, some of which included extensive redactions upon release. Survivors have revealed that some information about possible connections has been redacted, while other information about victims of Epstein’s crimes has been left untouched when it should have been withheld.