WASHINGTON—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.
Some people close to Trump and Bondi say it wasn’t a single issue that led to her dismissal but a steady drip of frustrations, including what Trump saw as a lack of positive news coverage on the Justice Department.
In addition to Zeldin and Blanche, other names have been floated as potential successors. They include U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been previously mentioned for the job, but the term-limited governor has some high-profile detractors close to the president.
Thin ice
Bondi’s eventual ouster built for months. Still the swiftness in which it came—just one month after he fired another cabinet member, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—delivered another shock through Washington. Trump had spent the first year of his presidency trying to avoid personnel shake-ups. Now he is contending with low approval ratings, increasingly dim midterm election forecasts, rising gas prices and the war in Iran.
The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Trump’s frustration with Bondi was nearly constant. He had mused to allies that he was thinking of appointing special counsels to pick up some of the work he felt she wasn’t doing. At one point, he showed White House visitors printouts of social-media posts from conservatives trashing his attorney general.
When one ally mentioned Bondi’s name in a casual setting at a sporting event in January, Trump unleashed into a diatribe immediately, saying she was doing a “terrible job” and expressing frustration he chose her for attorney general.
Earlier this year, Bondi rallied other senior figures in the administration and Congress to support her publicly and with Trump privately. This ultimately bought her more time largely because the president was personally fond of her, officials said. But he remained unhappy.
The attorney general told others she constantly felt pressure from Trump to deliver more than was possible, and that some of his demands were outside of things she could do.
The president also regularly heard from outside advisers that Bondi wasn’t aggressive enough. Two officials said the criticism sometimes came from Boris Epshteyn, the president’s personal lawyer who often speaks to Trump. Another administration official, Bill Pulte, often talked to Trump about cases the Justice Department could bring against his foes, the Journal has previously reported.
Trump had long envisioned more of a bulldog in the role; his first pick was former Matt Gaetz, the hard-charging former Florida congressman who became ensnared in an investigation into sexual misconduct and faced impossible odds at Senate confirmation. Bondi was a trusted fallback with an easy Southern demeanor and many years in public office. Still, she has been known to be sensitive to criticism. The Epstein controversy weighed on her especially, friends said. Some of that was her own doing, but at other times White House officials felt Bondi faced unfair attacks.
While Bondi has been stung by the dismissal she has been heartened by the support she has received and a flood of job offers, ranging from television to law, that have come in recent weeks as rumors grew. One possibility is she will join a firm and work on artificial intelligence.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump wrote on social media, avoiding the public vitriol he has used in past dismissals.
Reached by text on Thursday, Bondi replied with a short note: “It’s ALL so positive,” alluding to her next role. When asked for comment, a White House spokeswoman referred to Trump’s post.
Some White House officials tried to paper over any fallout between the two longtime friends. Bondi is scheduled to testify before Congress under oath April 14 about the Epstein case so she could soon be back in the news.
The Epstein files
Bondi was narrowly confirmed by the Senate for her job, winning the backing of just one Democrat, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. She shared Trump’s view that the Biden administration had wielded the Justice Department to target him and other Republicans, and she promised to change course, saying it would be an independent branch of government that would not pursue political enemies.
“This is not about targeting,” she said at the CPAC convention in Maryland two weeks after becoming attorney general in February 2025. “This is not about weaponization. This is about keeping America safe going forward and prosecuting violent criminals.”
Bondi was a seasoned state prosecutor, having served as Florida’s attorney general, but she had a habit of slip-ups. One day after her CPAC appearance, she suggested in a Fox News interview that she had a folder on her desk of Epstein’s clients. “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” she said. “That’s been a directive by President Trump. I’m reviewing that.”
The comment excited many in Trump’s base, who had believed for years that such a list existed and contained the names of powerful Democrats. (Bondi later said she was referring to Epstein files awaiting her review, not a specific client list.) They hoped Bondi would finally be the one to bring it to light. Senior White House aides had no idea what Bondi was talking about. That comment would haunt her. White House officials were again stunned when she handed out binders to social-media influencers at the White House. They began asking Bondi to secure approval before television hits related to Epstein.
She argued internally against releasing more information about the Epstein files, administration officials said, and told lawmakers it was just “child pornography that nobody wants to see,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, who met with Bondi in April 2025.
In July, the FBI and Justice Department said they wouldn’t release more, setting in motion a chain of events that led Congress to pass a law mandating the department produce more. Trump blamed Bondi for keeping his relationship with Epstein in the news, even though he repeatedly denied wrongdoing and said the files exonerated him.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in a piece published in December that Bondi didn’t appreciate how passionate some supporters were about the Epstein files.
Many conservatives never forgave Bondi, and Trump regularly raised her handling of the issue with top White House officials and allies, according to people familiar with the matter.
Despite the criticism, Wiles and Bondi maintained a friendship. At a recent White House event, Bondi was asking friends about Wiles, who had been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer and is in treatment while still on the job. “Pam is a brilliant, kind, thoughtful person and the next chapter of her life will be a wonderful one,” Wiles said in an interview.
The Epstein case would lead to some of the biggest cracks that have yet formed in Trump’s conservative coalition. A number of GOP lawmakers bucked the White House and demanded the Justice Department release all files related to the Epstein investigation, rebuking Trump’s efforts to make his allies fall in line. And then the release of those documents, which included millions of records, created months of negative news for Democrats, Republicans and global political and business leaders. The scandals only grew.
Prosecutions
Bondi promised at the February 2025 CPAC convention that the “weaponization” of the Justice Department wouldn’t continue. Yet soon she found herself under constant pressure to investigate and prosecute people Trump deemed to be his political enemies.
This list would include former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Sens. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) and Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), among others. Amid Trump’s mounting frustration over the pace of the probes, the department also stepped up its scrutiny of other Trump targets, including former CIA Director John Brennan and left-wing organizations.
Trump’s anger over prosecutions with Bondi wasn’t contained in private. It accidentally spilled out in September when the president posted on social media what had been intended to be a private message for Bondi urging her to bring charges against Comey and other targets. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote.
The post upset Bondi, who immediately began calling senior White House officials, allies and even Trump.
A number of federal prosecutors expressed reservations about launching criminal probes of Trump’s perceived enemies based on what they viewed to be directives from the president, rather than strong evidence. The White House moved to install handpicked replacements who might be more accommodating. The tactic led to indictments against Comey and James, but both were dismissed by a judge who said the former Trump aide behind the cases, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed as the interim U.S. attorney in eastern Virginia.
“Pam Bondi used the machinery of federal law enforcement not to pursue justice, but to carry out political vendettas at the direction of the president,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) said Thursday. “Her firing today is long overdue, but it does not erase the damage done and it does not absolve her of accountability.”
By the time Bondi was publicly ousted, she had left Washington. On Thursday, she was in her home state of Florida for a preplanned meeting with local sheriffs to promote a National Child ID Kit program.
“This initiative will save lives and find kids,” Bondi wrote on X, shortly after Trump had already said she was leaving government to take a still-undisclosed job in the private sector. “That’s the most important thing law enforcement can do: protect the most vulnerable among us.”
Write to Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com, Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com, C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com and Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com
