Pam Bondi leaves the DOJ weaker than when she became AG |
On April 2, President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi and announced that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche would serve as acting AG.
Bondi’s DOJ was largely ineffective, both by traditional standards and by Trump’s criteria. She was fiercely loyal to Trump, and this both undermined the legitimacy of our federal law enforcement and hindered her ability to carry out her duties.
It is extremely frustrating to see Trump refuse to change his behavior. He continues to demand loyalty over merit, even though that has already been the downfall of several of his prominent Cabinet members. We are almost certain to see no change in the pattern.
Bondi’s approach to DOJ was destructive because of her loyalty
During her tenure heading the federal law enforcement agency, the ordinary separation between the president and the DOJ was completely torn down. Bondi made no attempt to differentiate her mission, which is supposed to be fair and equal justice, and Trump’s own personal aims. There is little room for even the illusion of impartiality when portraits of Trump’s face are hung from the side of the DOJ building in the nation's capital.
Her transparent obedience to the president will leave a lasting stain on the institution. Bondi has framed her job as attorney general as carrying out Trump’s law enforcement priorities. While the attorney general is appointed by the president, past attorneys general have taken a more impartial approach, as demanded by the true pursuit of justice. Even though there have certainly been past criticisms of the impartiality of certain attorneys general, none has come close to the level of Bondi's cronyism.
It hasn’t just been optics that have eroded the reputation of the DOJ:
In 2025, three federal prosecutors resigned after they were asked to drop the case against former New York Mayor (and Trump ally) Eric Adams.
Several very thin cases have been brought against Trump’s political opponents, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The DOJ has even pursued a case transparently designed to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates against his better judgment.
Not only did Bondi's tenure massively erode the credibility of the DOJ, but she also failed at her own warped goals. Her Justice Department has failed to secure indictments in a number of high-profile retributive cases against Trump’s opponents, and failed to convict protesters charged with assaulting federal officers, in many cases a trumped-up charge (no pun intended).
The other way in which Bondi’s hackery sank her is the matter of the Epstein files. She was one of the chief overpromisers of the conspiracy because Trump ran on transparency on the matter of the Epstein files.
To appease that constituency, Bondi made grand claims that a “client list” was on her desk for review at the outset of her tenure. She later had to admit that no such list existed.
To sensible Americans, that was rather clear all along. For the conspiracy theorists, however, that had all the makings of a cover-up.
From there, the conspiracy has snowballed out of control, leading to more and more demands for document dumps that Bondi has failed to comply with, only further feeding the insatiable hunger for a conspiracy that probably doesn’t actually exist.
Don’t expect Bondi’s replacement to be any better
Americans should be relieved that the U.S. justice system has largely withstood Bondi’s destructive approach, but Trump is obviously unimpressed. However, if he were capable of introspection, he could see that the reasons he selected her are precisely why she failed.
Bondi was selected because she is a Trump loyalist who had no problem obliterating the reputation of the Department of Justice in the name of settling scores with Democrats.
Blanche, the acting attorney general, is another loyalist who served as Trump's defense attorney in multiple criminal trials before he returned to the presidency. Blanche has made several statements indicating he is no less of a crony than Bondi.
Trump needs to realize that the reason his Cabinet officials are generally struggling to carry out his mission is that he has demanded loyalty as their top quality, rather than merit. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Attorney General Pam Bondi were fired due to the same underlying issue: They showed loyalty rather than competency.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science