{"id":206343,"date":"2026-04-03T10:58:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T10:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/bondi-firing-a-reminder-that-even-ultra-loyalists-get-dumped-by-trump-theguardian-com\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T10:58:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T10:58:21","slug":"bondi-firing-a-reminder-that-even-ultra-loyalists-get-dumped-by-trump-theguardian-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/bondi-firing-a-reminder-that-even-ultra-loyalists-get-dumped-by-trump-theguardian-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Bondi firing a reminder that even ultra-loyalists get dumped by Trump – theguardian.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Attorney general was key part of effort to go after enemies but even she could not satisfy whims of mercurial president
Pam Bondi\u2019s swift dismissal on Thursday underscores a reality that has met Trump loyalists from Jeff Sessions to Kristi Noem \u2013 no amount of loyalty is enough to save oneself from being dumped by Donald Trump<\/a>.
Since the president assumed office last year, there have been few people more important to his effort to remake government than Bondi, his longtime friend.
Trump pledged that retribution<\/a> would be the hallmark of his second term, and Bondi was the chief enforcer from her first day in office. As attorney general, she obliterated the longstanding norm that the justice department be apolitical and keep the White House at arm\u2019s length. She oversaw purges<\/a> of career employees who had been assigned to work on the criminal cases against Trump as well as scores of career lawyers with irreplaceable expertise<\/a>. She also oversaw politically motivated prosecutions against Trump\u2019s political enemies, including the former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general, Letitia James.
\u201cPam Bondi took a sledgehammer to the justice department and its workforce. The DoJ\u2019s independence, integrity and workforce have degraded more under her leadership than at any other time during the department\u2019s 155-year history,\u201d said Stacey Young, a former justice department lawyer who leads Justice Connection, an advocacy group for DoJ alumni.
\u201cWhat she destroyed in a year could take decades to rebuild. But we have a president who fired her because she didn\u2019t go far enough,\u201d she added.
Bondi met with prosecutors from the southern district of Florida to discuss the investigation into former CIA director John Brennan and others as recently as Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. But in the end, Bondi\u2019s loyalty to Trump was not enough when she could not fully deliver on the president\u2019s mercurial wishes. Trump reportedly<\/a> fired her in part because she was unable to make progress on prosecuting his enemies and over the way she handled the Epstein files.
A federal judge dismissed the cases against Comey and James last year<\/a> after finding the prosecutor overseeing them, also a Trump loyalist, had been unlawfully appointed. Federal grand juries in Virginia also rebuffed efforts to re-indict James. The administration\u2019s failure to move past those safeguards was a blunt reminder of the checks and balances that still exist in the American legal system. It was those same safeguards that appear to have enraged Trump.
Trump\u2019s frustration over how Bondi handled the Epstein files illustrates how the matter continues to haunt his administration. Shortly after she became attorney general, Bondi appeared on Fox News and said the Epstein files were \u201csitting on my desk\u201d. Months later, the justice department said it would not be releasing any more information, citing the need to protect victims and saying there was no \u201cclient list\u201d.
Congress responded by passing a bipartisan law mandating the release of the files. The justice department has released millions of documents to comply with that law, but there are unexplained redactions and documents have appeared and disappeared from the department\u2019s website. Those documents have shed light on a vast network of powerful people who communicated and interacted with Epstein, many of whom have since stepped down from positions of power in the private sector. It has also kept the controversy in the news amid questions about Trump\u2019s own friendship and relationship with Epstein.
Bondi tried to save face with Trump \u2013 insulting<\/a> and sparring pugilistically with members of Congress during public hearings and as recently as Wednesday was meeting with prosecutors and justice department officials to discuss an investigation into Brennan and other Trump enemies.
It wasn\u2019t enough.
\u201cCountless and baseless political investigations, hundreds of career law enforcement professionals purged, a massive cover-up of the Epstein files, and a wholesale effort to turn the department into a criminal law firm representing the person of the president instead of the American people,\u201d the California senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat who Trump reportedly wants prosecuted, said in a post on X.
\u201cBut Pam Bondi was merely a symptom of Donald Trump\u2019s chronic allergy to our nation\u2019s laws. And, in the end, her sycophancy could not prevent the inevitable defenestration that eventually befalls most Trump loyalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attorney general was key part of effort to go after enemies but even she could not satisfy whims of mercurial presidentPam Bondi\u2019s swift dismissal on Thursday underscores a reality that has met Trump loyalists from Jeff Sessions to Kristi Noem \u2013 no amount of loyalty is enough to save oneself from being dumped by Donald […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-206343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}