Trump Says Pam Bondi’s Time as Attorney General Is Over

President Donald Trump has ousted Pam Bondi from leading the Department of Justice.

“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 posted on Truth Social.

Trump told his former personal defense lawyer that her time as attorney general was up shortly before his Wednesday prime-time address to the nation on the war in Iran, according to a source briefed on the conversation.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who also previously worked as part of Trump’s personal legal team, will be acting attorney general, the president posted.

“We will continue backing the blue, enforcing the law, and doing everything in our power to keep America safe,” Blanche posted on X. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NOTUS.

Bondi is the second Cabinet official the president dismissed this year, after he removed Kristi Noem as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Facing unpopular poll numbers, a shake-up before the midterm elections in November could be well underway.

Two sources tell NOTUS that the president has also been asking around about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s job. One person said she was in “hot water.” A second said that despite Trump’s inquiries, her job was safe and that Gabbard did not intend to resign.

The president has been frustrated with Bondi, according to two additional sources close to the president and the Department of Justice, in part because of the lack of movement on Justice Department cases targeting the president’s foes.

Bondi has long been falling out of favor with allies in the president’s orbit, with White House officials both publicly and privately criticizing her handling of the Epstein Files. Some of the president’s allies have argued that her attempts to calm the Jeffrey Epstein clamor only made the outrage worse.

Bondi has also faced condemnation by Democrats for refusing to apologize to Epstein’s victims who were seated in the audience at her House Judiciary Committee hearing in February. Bondi also saved and read aloud details of lawmakers’ search histories related to the unredacted Epstein Files, which Democrats say are confidential.

News of the conversation between Bondi and Trump, first reported by Semafor, comes less than two weeks before Bondi is scheduled to appear for a deposition before the House Oversight Committee on April 14.

Some senators are pushing the White House to appoint Sen. Mike Lee as attorney general and plan to pitch Trump directly on the idea, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

The White House did not respond for comment.

Although Bondi ultimately fell out of Trump’s favor, she oversaw a rapid transformation of what has traditionally been an apolitical law enforcement agency. She gutted prosecutorial teams that had investigated Trump in the past and oversaw the president’s attempts to exact revenge by criminally indicting political enemies. She started her tenure on Feb. 5, 2025, with what became known as her Day 1 “zealous advocacy” memo, recasting federal prosecutors who should represent the government’s interests instead as the president’s own attorneys, describing them as “his lawyers.”

Her relentless political attacks on staff and mass firings created a mass exodus of an estimated 16,000 employees and led to the creation of a DOJ expatriate group known as Justice Connection, which put out a scathing statement in the wake of Bondi’s firing.

“Pam Bondi took a sledgehammer to the Justice Department and its workforce. DOJ’s independence, integrity, and workforce have degraded more under her leadership than at any other time during the department’s 155-year history. What she destroyed in a year could take decades to rebuild,” the group’s founder, Stacey Young, said in a statement.

Trump announced his decision in a post that followed his celebration of blowing up a bridge in Iran and complaints about Bruce Springsteen being a “very boring singer.”