We covered before that President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi and has replaced her with Todd Blanche, a man who got Ghislaine Maxwell her special treatment and also doesn’t want the Epstein files as part of the Justice Department’s future, ie. release the files, but bury any investigation. Well, this is not only Bondi and Blanche’s legacy, but it is definitely Donald Trump’s, as well.
In elaborating on this point, Truthout writes:
Trump said Bondi is “transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector.”
President Donald Trump announced that he has fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, who leaves behind a legacy of obstructing the release of the Epstein files and protecting the alleged sex abusers named within them.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Thursday afternoon. “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 that Bondi’s Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, will step in to lead the Justice Department while a permanent replacement is picked. Some reports, citing anonymous officials, have said that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is a top contender, but Trump has not yet made a final decision.
Bondi’s time at the helm of the Department of Justice has been marred with controversy. The department’s botched, heavily redacted releases of the Epstein files were dragged out over months as the administration scrambled to react to allegations of cover ups — reportedly trying to protect Jeffrey Epstein’s associates, Trump being one of them.
Some documents in the files contain allegations that Trump sexually abused a 13-year-old girl, while other reports say that the DOJ has worked to withhold files that contain any mentions of the president.
The release of the files was so mangled that it drew scrutiny from both sides of the aisle in Congress. One poll released in January found that only 6 percent of Americans said they were satisfied with the amount that the department had released thus far, including a mere 12 percent of Republicans.
A flashpoint for Bondi in particular was her disastrous House Judiciary Committee hearing this February, which devolved many times into shouting as she belligerently refused to answer questions and instead hurled insults against lawmakers. Reports say that officials within the administration were frustrated with her performance.
Trump, meanwhile, has reportedly been frustrated with Bondi because the department, in his view, is not pursuing his foes aggressively enough. Not securing indictments against his political opponents “is a problem for job security with the president,” one former White House official told NBC. One issue, Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, was Bondi’s failure to quickly prosecute investigators in his criminal cases like former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
This is despite concerns from experts and ex-DOJ officials over Trump’s weaponization of the department, with the president seeking to use it instead as his own personal attack dog. Indeed, Bondi complied with Trump and aided his agenda in other ways, restructuring the department to fit his needs.
ProPublica reports, for instance, that the DOJ shut down over 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of the Trump administration — including into a nursing home accused of patient abuse and a cryptocurrency company accused of cheating investors. It shifted resources, instead, to pursue immigration cases.
She has also directed the Justice Department to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Republicans’ landmark Georgia voter suppression law, and shut down the DOJ’s unit that pursues corruption by public officials and dismantled its Civil Rights Division.
Bondi had faced impeachment counts filed against her by Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pennsylvania) last month over her “defiance of the Oversight’s Committee’s subpoena to release the full, unredacted Epstein files,” abuse of authority, defiance of federal court orders, and perjury in testimony to Congress.
