WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday after months of strained relations and named his former personal lawyer to serve as the acting chief of the Justice Department.
The move, which the Republican president announced in a social media post, comes amid criticism of Bondi's handling of the Epstein files and her failure to successfully prosecute several perceived Trump political foes.
"Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year," Trump said on Truth Social. "Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country."
Bondi "will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector," the president said, and will be replaced on an interim basis by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who Trump described as "a very talented and respected Legal Mind."
Bondi has been a staunch Trump ally but has drawn fire from some of his supporters for her handling of the release of the Justice Department files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
The Epstein affair has been a major political liability for Trump, who was a longtime friend of the disgraced financier.
Bondi has also reportedly drawn Trump's ire by falling short with efforts to prosecute perceived Trump opponents such as former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
According to The New York Times, Trump may name former Republican congressman Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, to be the next attorney general.
In the meantime, the post will be filled by Blanche, who was one of the personal lawyers who defended Trump in the multiple criminal cases he faced after he left the White House in 2021.
Bondi, in a post on X, said serving as attorney general had been "the honor of a lifetime" and said she will "continue fighting for President Trump" in her unspecified new private sector job.
"Over the next month I will be working tirelessly to transition the office of Attorney General to the amazing Todd Blanche," she said. "I remain eternally grateful for the trust that President Trump placed in me to Make America Safe Again."
- 'Good riddance' -
Bondi's ouster comes nearly a month after Trump fired Kristi Noem as the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
Democratic lawmakers welcomed Bondi's firing.
"Good riddance," said Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
"Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice became a cesspool of corruption," Warren said. "Bondi will be remembered for blocking the release of the Epstein files."
Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Bondi's legacy "will be the weaponization of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency for Donald Trump's personal benefit."
Bondi joined Trump's legal team during his first term impeachment trial, in which he was alleged to have pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to find political dirt on Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives but acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate.
Bondi helped press Trump's false claims of voter fraud after he lost the 2020 election to Biden.
She made television appearances on behalf of Trump and pushed to delegitimize vote counting in battleground states as part of the bid by the former president to overturn the results of the vote.
Bondi also criticised the criminal cases brought against Trump, appearing in solidarity at his New York trial, where he was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star.
Bondi served as a prosecutor for 18 years before being elected Florida's attorney general in 2010, the first woman to hold the post. She was reelected to a second term in 2014. - AFP
