NEWS
Breaking News: President Trump is said to have fired Attorney General Pam Bondi as his frustration with her performance deepened.
President Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, removing the nation’s top law enforcement officer as his frustration with her job performance deepened.
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, will be the acting attorney general, the president said on Thursday.
Ms. Bondi becomes the second cabinet member in recent weeks to lose her job, after Mr. Trump ousted Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, last month. She was replaced by Markwayne Mullin.
The dismissal of Ms. Bondi, 60, ends a turbulent 14-month tenure as attorney general in which she tried desperately to appease a boss who demanded unimpeded control of the Justice Department to pursue politically motivated investigations against targets of his choosing, even when prosecutors warned that there was no evidence to do so.
In the process, Ms. Bondi surrendered much of the department’s historic independence and oversaw the exodus of experienced career officials, leaving the department’s public corruption and national security units, along with many local U.S. attorneys’ offices, weakened and demoralized.
Yet Mr. Trump remained annoyed by Ms. Bondi’s inability to secure indictments of people he referred to as “scum” during a speech in the department’s Great Hall about a year ago.