Pam Bondi has left the Justice Department after failing to win criminal convictions against several of President Trump’s political opponents — but her exit does not guarantee a successor will have more success.
Over the past year the department under Bondi ran into resistance from judges, grand juries and career prosecutors while repeatedly pursuing allegations against Trump adversaries. That same skepticism from courts and legal hurdles will confront any new attorney general, even as Trump presses for politically charged cases.
“At the end of the day, it’s not like there were some magic steps that Pam Bondi could have taken to make bad cases look good to grand juries or judges,” wrote Peter Keisler, a former acting attorney general in the George W. Bush administration. “The problem is that the president is demanding that prosecutions be brought when there’s no evidence and no valid legal theory. A new Attorney General won’t change that.”
Bondi was the latest in a string of Trump-era attorneys general who faced pressure to advance the president’s demands for loyalty and retribution. Trump publicly criticized Jeff Sessions after his recusal from the Russia investigation and later pushed him out; he clashed with William Barr when Barr declined to endorse false election-fraud claims and Barr resigned soon after.
Bondi, who joined the Justice Department 14 months ago, openly praised the president and moved to investigate Democrats and other critics despite reservations from career prosecutors about the strength of the evidence. After Trump urged her on social media last September to charge former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, prosecutors obtained indictments in Virginia.
Those early wins largely unraveled. A judge dismissed the case after finding that the prosecutor who filed it, Lindsey Halligan, had been illegally appointed. Grand juries declined to return new mortgage-fraud charges against James, and the Comey matter has been hobbled by evidentiary disputes and statute-of-limitations questions. Both Comey and James deny wrongdoing and say the prosecutions are politically motivated.
Other efforts also stalled. A federal grand jury in Washington declined to indict Democratic lawmakers over a video in which they urged service members to resist “illegal orders.” A judge quashed Justice Department subpoenas seeking Federal Reserve records tied to testimony by Chair Jerome Powell about a $2.5 billion renovation, saying the government had “produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime” and calling the subpoenas a “thin and unsubstantiated” pretext to pressure Powell on interest rates. A prosecutor later conceded that the probe had not found evidence of criminality.
An investigation in Florida into former CIA Director John Brennan’s congressional testimony about Russian election interference has been open for months but has produced no charges; Brennan’s lawyers have called the inquiry baseless. Separately, former national security adviser John Bolton remains exposed to a separate classified-documents probe that predates Bondi’s tenure and could lead to trial.
For now, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is leading the Justice Department. Blanche has longstanding ties to Trump, having served as one of his personal lawyers. Several sources told The Associated Press that Trump has privately mentioned Lee Zeldin, his EPA chief and a loyalist, as a possible long-term replacement.
Observers say a new attorney general may be expected to intensify efforts to pursue the president’s political foes. “If she was fired because Trump did not think that she was moving quickly enough in bringing criminal cases against his political enemies, then you would expect that the person that would replace her would probably agree to escalate those efforts,” said Jimmy Gurule, a former Justice Department official and Notre Dame law professor.
Blanche signaled a similar tone in a Fox News interview, saying the president and others were “frustrated” and warning that what had happened over the past four years “is unforgivable and can never happen again.” Whether a new AG can mount prosecutions that survive judicial and evidentiary scrutiny remains an open question.
