Trump fires Attorney General Pam Bondi
President Trump removes Attorney General Pam Bondi and installs Deputy AG Todd Blanche as acting attorney general. Trump cites no reason, but the firing caps a year in which the DOJ's handling of the Epstein files — heavy redactions, leaked survivor identities, and zero new charges — dominated scrutiny of her tenure.
On April 2, 2026, President Trump removed Pam Bondi as attorney general, announcing on Truth Social that she would leave the Justice Department and that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche would serve as acting attorney general. Trump’s statement praised Bondi as “a Great American Patriot” and offered no reason for the change, saying she would move to “an important new job in the private sector.”
The Epstein Backdrop
People familiar with the president’s thinking told multiple outlets that Trump had grown frustrated on several fronts — among them the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein document releases and what he viewed as a lack of prosecutions of his political opponents. Bondi had been the public face of the administration’s Epstein record from the start: the “client list on my desk” claim and the “Phase 1” binder fiasco in early 2025; the rolling, heavily redacted releases that began in December; the leak of survivor identities; the Maxwell transfer to a minimum-security camp; and zero charges against any co-conspirator.
The tension had become bipartisan and institutional. In early March, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee voted 24–19 — with five Republicans joining every Democrat — to subpoena Bondi over the DOJ’s review process. On March 18, Democratic members walked out of a closed-door briefing with Bondi and Blanche in protest.
Blanche Takes Over
Blanche, who had been one of Trump’s personal defense lawyers before joining the administration, stepped in as acting attorney general; EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was floated as a likely permanent nominee. His elevation raised immediate questions about the fate of the remaining releases. In May 2026, Blanche told the Senate he would not recommend a pardon or commutation for Ghislaine Maxwell, and Bondi herself returned to Capitol Hill for closed-door testimony, where she defended the roughly 3 million pages released while conceding there had been “redaction errors.”
Trump did not cite Epstein in dismissing Bondi, but her tenure had been defined by little else — and the firing did nothing to quiet lawmakers in both parties who still disputed whether the DOJ had complied with the law.