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Trump fired Pam Bondi, apparently on Wednesday night, before addressing the country about the war in Iran. But he still has an Epstein problem. Firing Bondi will not make that go away.
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Firing Pam Bondi doesn’t change the sweetheart deal Ghislaine Maxwell got in exchange for saying she never saw Trump doing anything wrong. For all we know, there’s a pardon or a commutation in the works, too.
Bondi has to have taken the job of Attorney General knowing what was in store for her. She was cast in the role of the Trump 2.0 Jeff Sessions and her fate was much the same as his, although Trump was a little nicer and her neck got to the chopping block earlier than Sessions’ did—21 months to Bondi’s 14.
To take the parallel further, Todd Blanche, who will become the acting Attorney General, takes on the role played by Matthew Whittaker in the first Trump administration. You may not remember Whittaker, and if you do, it may be because he was involved in the sale of “masculine toilets.” He was a former U.S. Attorney from Iowa who became acting Attorney General but never received the nomination for the top job. If the past is prologue, the important question now is who will be the Bill Barr of the second Trump administration?
Names have already surfaced and more are likely to. They are all Trump loyalists of the first order. Trump’s EPA director, former congressman Lee Zeldin, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt (who previously took himself out of the running when Bondi was nominated), and failed New Jersey U.S. Attorney and former Trump lawyer Alina Habba. The most loyal of the Trump loyal. It’s difficult to understand why any credible lawyer would want to serve this president in this position. All the priorities are on the table: prosecute enemies, give friends a pass, forget about justice, and just do whatever the president wants. That means the ultimate nominee should face extraordinary scrutiny.
Bondi was eminently fireable based on objective criteria. But the conduct most former prosecutors would find highly objectionable is probably what Trump liked most about her: the heavy theatrics when she testified before Congress, her willingness to indict a former FBI director and a state attorney general on charges too flimsy to withstand scrutiny in court, and her readiness to investigate senators and members of Congress on specious grounds.
So why fire her, and why now? Many people suggest it was her handling of the Epstein files, which was clearly a mess. Or could it be last week’s reporting from Carol Leonnig, which revealed some of what Trump has fought hard in court to keep private, namely details of the documents he retained during the classified documents investigation, which we discussed here? Trump could have found a reason to fire Bondi on virtually any day of her time in office. So it’s interesting that it happened on this particular timeline.
Whatever the reason it happened now, this outcome was preordained from the moment she took office. Donald Trump routinely asks his attorneys general to stretch and bend, if not break, the rule of law. Bondi was compliant. When asked to prosecute the president’s enemies, she did. The disastrous indictments of Jim Comey and Letitia James were two examples. When it came to the president’s friends, she appears to have complied as well. The investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, involving allegations that he took a $50,000 cash bribe in a Cava bag, simply disappeared. Every public servant has personal red lines. For Jeff Sessions, it was appointing a special counsel because he had a conflict of interest. For Bill Barr, it was leaving office before Donald Trump escalated his efforts to overturn the election on January 6. We do not really know what Pam Bondi’s line would have been because she never invoked it. Instead, the president fired her.
Bondi’s departure is, unfortunately, no cause for celebration. Donald Trump still gets to choose the next attorney general. He will likely look not for an experienced federal practitioner, but for someone who is compliant, loyal, and willing to do what no good attorney general should in order to serve him and maintain proximity to power.
The Epstein survivors explained their view in a brief statement on Thursday.
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At the height of public interest in the Epstein files, they appeared to be a major concern for Trump. In some ways, it has worked; they no longer dominate the news cycle. That tells us what we need to know. The job is about protecting Trump, and whoever suppresses the Epstein files succeeds. It is not about justice. My friend Preet Bharara got it exactly right.
At her confirmation hearing, Bondi refused to say Biden beat Trump. When we discussed it, just over a year ago, I wrote, “Make no mistake about it, Pam Bondi is a Donald Trump loyalist. And, if you won’t say no to Donald Trump when it comes to the Big Lie, what will you say no to him about?” Apparently, not much.
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