Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Especially Epstein.
On Wednesday morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi descended the sun-splashed steps of the White House with President Trump, smiling at him just before entering the presidential limousine for a two-mile ride to the Supreme Court.
It was on that short ride in “The Beast” when Bondi learned she was being removed from her job.
During the drive, Trump told her, “I think it’s time,” she would later tell an associate.
The ensuing hours were as awkward and chaotic as Bondi’s 14-month tenure as the nation’s top law-enforcement official. Trump and Bondi briefly sat near each other during the Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship, but the president soon switched chairs. Later, Bondi would ask Trump if she could keep her job until the summer. The president declined.
Trump had decided earlier in the week that he was replacing her. He was frustrated she didn’t do more to contain fallout from the department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigative files and incensed that she had not successfully prosecuted a number of his political enemies. Trump has floated Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin as attorney general to other advisers but hasn’t decided on anyone, according to White House officials. He is also interested in evaluating how soon-to-be interim Attorney General Todd Blanche performs, they said.
Bondi and Trump had talked about her leaving since around the beginning of the year, according to a person familiar with the discussions, and he had regularly expressed dissatisfaction with the speed at which she handled his agenda. She is expected to leave the Justice Department in about a month.
On numerous occasions, she seemed to go out of her way to appease him, launching what many prosecutors in the department viewed as weak probes of Trump’s favored targets. Some of those cases were later blocked by judges or grand juries. The Justice Department even had a giant banner with Trump’s face on it hung on its main building, an unprecedented move that illustrated his control over the agency. Last week, she appointed a prosecutor to look into allegations of election fraud in 2020 in a bid to address another gripe the president had.
It was never enough.
