“(President Trump) wants to prosecute his opponents and doesn’t understand why he can’t press the button and do it,” Dave Aronberg, a former Florida prosecutor who worked with Bondi, told USA TODAY.
Trump fires Pam Bondi after Epstein criticism
Pam Bondi is absent. President Trump has fired the US attorney general following criticism of the Epstein file.
WASHINGTON – “We love Pam.” “A great American patriot.” “My faithful friend.”
Judging by President Donald Trump’s effusive praise of former Attorney General Pam Bondi on social media on April 2, you might think he was nominating her for the award rather than firing her.
But this was the president’s way of saying that Bondi would no longer work at the Justice Department after only a year on the job.
President Trump praised Bondi for doing a “great job” targeting crimes and homicides across the country, and said he “faithfully fulfilled” his role. So why would he oust the woman he had chosen to serve as the nation’s highest law enforcement officer?
Asked for comment on Trump’s reasoning, the White House referred USA TODAY to Trump’s social media posts, which not only praised Bondi but also said, “She will be moving to an important new job that is desperately needed in the private sector and will be announced in the near future.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment, but Bondi posted on social media that he would “continue to fight” for the president, where he would help transition the department “before moving on to a key role in the private sector, which I am excited about.”
President Trump has so far chosen to keep the reasons opaque in his public statements, but Bondi has been immune to criticism for about a year in office. She is accused of politicizing the Justice Department and ignoring the victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and is facing multiple impeachment efforts.
And despite being accused of weaponizing the Justice Department, she has had little success prosecuting political opponents and critics, reportedly drawing the president’s ire.
“(President Trump) wants to prosecute his opponents, but he doesn’t understand why he can’t just push a button and do it,” Dave Aronberg, a former state attorney in Palm Beach County, Florida, who worked in the Florida attorney general’s office in Bondi, told USA TODAY. Aronberg, a Democrat, testified in support of his nomination for U.S. attorney general.
“Attorney General Bondi is an experienced prosecutor, and she will never be the Roy Cohn that (Trump) wants her to be,” Aronberg added, referring to the lawyer who helped Sen. Joseph McCarthy investigate suspected communists in the 1950s and later mentored and represented Trump.
Targeting Trump’s opponents but failing to capture them
In September, Bondi agreed to Trump’s request to appoint Lindsey Harrigan, a lawyer with no experience as a prosecutor, as Virginia’s top prosecutor, but Trump wanted to indict his critics, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Harrigan then heeded President Trump’s call for grand jury indictments against each.
But those prosecutions went nowhere.
The judge ruled that Harrigan was illegally appointed and dismissed the charges in both cases. The Justice Department has since tried at least twice unsuccessfully to obtain new indictments against James from a grand jury. As for Comey, the department faces questions about whether the legal deadline to seek new charges has passed.
The Justice Department has appealed an initial ruling that threw out the cases against Comey and James.
The Justice Department under Bondy is also investigating others who have been hostile to President Trump, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and six members of Congress who urged military personnel to disobey potentially illegal orders. However, the department has not secured charges against these people.
Epstein file controversy
Bondi has also come under fire for his handling of the Epstein file, as Republicans in Congress join Democrats in calling for greater transparency at the Justice Department.
In March 2025, Mr. Bondi fueled expectations that the Justice Department would release incriminating information against associates of Mr. Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
But in May, Bondi reportedly told Trump that his name appeared multiple times in the file. The Justice Department then released a memo in July saying that a systematic internal review of the files had not uncovered a list of criminal Epstein clients and that “further disclosure is not appropriate or warranted.”
Since then, Mr. Bondi has had to face accusations of involvement in a cover-up from some Republicans and many members of the public who sympathize with Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement.
After Congress passed a transparency law forcing the Justice Department to release the Epstein documents, the department missed its legal release deadline by weeks. He released an image of the alleged victim, but admitted it was a mistake. And he has since been accused of withholding and editing documents in violation of the law.
“Sadly, the Department of Justice has failed to adequately redact victim information and, at the same time, has failed to avoid exposing individuals who are criminals,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the transparency law’s lead sponsor, told USA TODAY in a statement in February.
Bondi’s troubles with Epstein didn’t seem to end when she was fired. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Mr. Bondi to testify under oath in an April 14 deposition about how the Justice Department handled the Epstein file.
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, posted on social media on April 2 that those plans remain unchanged.
“Pam Bondi and Donald Trump may think that if she is fired, she will not be able to testify before the Oversight Committee. They are wrong. We look forward to hearing from her under oath.”
