President Trump ousts Attorney General Pam Bondi : NPR

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Pam Bondi is out as attorney general. President Trump announced she was leaving the top job at the Justice Department in a social media post today. He called Bondi a great American patriot and a loyal friend. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is here to tell us what we know. Hey, Ryan.

RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.

DETROW: There had been chatter about Pam Bondi’s status for a while now, but then this afternoon – only this afternoon President Trump announced she was out. What did he say?

LUCAS: So in his social media post announcing this, Trump offered a couple of kind words for Bondi. He said she had done a tremendous job overseeing what he called a massive crackdown on crime. He said, quote, “we love Pam.” And he said she’ll be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector. Those are his exact words. He didn’t say what that would be, only that it would be announced later. And he also said that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is going to step in as acting attorney general.

DETROW: I guess all those positive words make me wonder why she’s leaving her post. Did he give any explanation for why he was removing her from this high-profile role?

LUCAS: You know, he didn’t. But look, there’s been a lot of frustration about Bondi’s leadership at the Justice Department. That includes quite notably her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Early in her tenure, Bondi talked up the Epstein file. She once infamously said on Fox News that Epstein’s client list was sitting on her desk waiting to be reviewed. And then a few months after that, the Justice Department and the FBI came out and said, there was no such client list.

The department also initially refused to release any additional materials from the Epstein files. That created a lot of blowback. It prompted Congress to pass a law mandating that DOJ make those files public. The department then blew past the deadline to make those files public, and that fueled a lot of frustration on Capitol Hill among Democrats and, it has to be said, a lot of Republicans as well. So Bondi’s mishandling of all of this helped turn the Epstein files into a massive political headache for the president, for his administration, and that headache has not gone away.

DETROW: And that was just one frustration. What are some of the other things that contributed?

LUCAS: Well, look, President Trump has been quite open about his desire for the Justice Department to use its vast powers to target his perceived political enemies. He even openly instructed Bondi in a post on social media last fall to hurry up and get to it. And the Justice Department, it has to be said, has opened investigations into Trump’s perceived opponents. There’s Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, former CIA Director John Brennan. Of course, there’s also former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. That’s just a partial list.

But the Justice Department has struggled to find success in these efforts. At this point, Comey and James are the only two to be indicted, and a court later tossed both of those cases because it found the prosecutor who had secured them was unlawfully appointed. The president campaigned on getting revenge on his political foes and the department’s failures on that front under Bondi seemed to be a source of frustration for him.

DETROW: Let’s step back a second ’cause you have filed a lot of reports over the past year on this topic. Bondi was in charge of the Justice Department for 14 months. How much did the department change under her?

LUCAS: The changes have been enormous and in so many different ways. At a high level, traditionally, the Justice Department has been independent to a degree from the White House. That’s particularly true when it comes to investigations, and that’s to try to insulate those from partisan politics. Bondi tossed that independence out the window. As we just talked about, the department has targeted the president’s perceived enemies. And then more broadly, the past 14 months have just been an incredibly chaotic time at the Justice Department. Career prosecutors and FBI officials have been fired, entire sections of the department have been gutted, and the credibility of the department before the courts has suffered as well, as we’ve seen in court rulings across the country from exasperated judges. Now, the man stepping in to replace Bondi, at least for now, is Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. As I said, he, too, is a Trump loyalist. He’s Trump’s former personal attorney, and he has been a power in the department during this administration. So the trajectory is unlikely to change with this shakeup for now.

DETROW: NPR’s Ryan Lucas, thanks so much for your reporting.

LUCAS: Thank you.

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