Trump fires Pam Bondi as attorney general, sources say

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Pam Bondi has been fired, a senior administration official and a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.

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President Donald Trump had grown “more and more frustrated” with Bondi in recent days, a person familiar with White House deliberations said, adding that while he likes her as a person, he doesn’t think she has “executed on his vision” in the way that he wants.

According to a source familiar with the decision, Todd Blanche will be the acting attorney general, effective immediately.

Bondi is the second Cabinet member to be axed by the president.Kristi Noem was fired last month as homeland security secretaryin a descent that mirrored Bondi’s. NBC News reported that Trump grew increasingly frustrated with Noem but that her performance at two congressional hearings is what finally cost her the job.

Trump had chosen Bondi, a longtime loyalist, to lead the Justice Department after embattled former Florida congressmanMatt Gaetz withdrew as nominee.

Bondi had long ties to Trump. During the 2016 Republican National Convention, she joined in “lock her up” chants aimed at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and she was then part of Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial. After Trump lost the 2020 election, she was involved in efforts to overturn the results, falsely claiming that he had “won Pennsylvania.”

“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans — Not anymore,” Trump said on Truth Social in nominating her. “Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again.”

Two people familiar with the president’s frustrations told NBC News that Trump and Bondi had a heated confrontation at the White House last week, although they did not specify what it was about.

Bondi traveled with the president on Wednesday to the Supreme Court for oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case, and she attended his prime-time address at the White House on the Iran war.

As attorney general, Bondi oversaw the firings of scores of attorneys and FBI agents tied to the prosecutions of Trump. Her tenure has also been marked by a larger voluntary exodus of lawyers that has left the department with far fewer career employees who are beholden to law and not politics.

She also oversaw many Trump administration priorities, cutting off investigations into police departments and reframing the department to focus on investigations into the perceived “weaponization” of the Justice Department, and into voter fraud, though it is rare.

But under her leadership, the Justice Department has struggled to bring successful cases against Trump’s political enemies, with the president himself often complicating the cases through his public statements. In February, as NBC News first reported, the Justice Department failed to indict six members of Congress over a social media video in which they told members of the military and intelligence communities that they shouldn’t obey unlawful orders.

Changing the Justice Department’s leadership doesn’t guarantee the president the outcome he seeks, as courts have so far largely blocked the administration’s efforts to go after his enemies, and Congress successfully sought and won the release of the DOJ’s files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Justice Department’s investigation into the Federal Reserve and Chairman Jerome Powell was blocked by a judge, and its cases were dismissed against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after a judge ruled the U.S. attorney had been improperly appointed.

Some of Trump’s allies also have been frustrated by Bondi’s handling of the millions of documents released under a congressional law about the Epstein files.

Appearing before the House Oversight Committee in February, Bondi praised the department’s efforts to comply with the act.

But many Epstein survivors and members of Congress have denounced the department’s handling of the files, some of which have included many redactions when released. Survivors pointed out that some information about possible accomplices was redacted, while other information about victims of Epstein’s crimes was left untouched when it should have been blacked out.