President Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, removing a Trump OG and one of the most powerful officials in his administration just twelve days before she was scheduled to sit for a congressional deposition on the Epstein files. Within hours, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee were already trying to find a way out. “The Republicans say they’re going to review this. Take a second look. She’s no longer the sitting attorney general,” said Scott MacFarlane, the former CBS News justice correspondent who broke the story live during the show. “If they’re going to review this, they’re going to try to get out of this potentially and try to give her an exit strategy out of that subpoena.” Democrats on the committee, including Maxwell Frost of Florida, said no — this is a bipartisan subpoena, and she is expected to show for it.
The subpoena was a perjury trap. Either Bondi went in and told the truth, in which case her career was ruined, or she lied to protect the president, in which case she faced potential perjury charges. That is not a good choice for anyone who built their career on law and order. Trump pulled the escape hatch. She was the first casualty of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law passed late last year requiring the administration to release all files with no unnecessary redactions. As MacFarlane put it, “That law was such a trap — not a deliberate trap, but a trap for the Trump administration because they can’t disprove a negative. As soon as you hold back one piece of paper, they’re going to think you’re holding back everything.”
The papers they did hold back included allegations of rape against the president.
Bondi’s replacement is Todd Blanche, Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer who sat next to him at the defense table during the Manhattan hush money trial. Blanche has also been accused of being the person handling the Epstein cover-up inside the Justice Department. “He’s the guy who’s been administering it,” MacFarlane said. “Now he has more control, more power, but it also makes the whole thing bigger in the public’s mind.” Blanche has only limited experience inside the DOJ and is serving in an acting capacity, raising the question of whether Trump prefers acting officials he can leverage over confirmed ones who might push back.
Names circulating for the permanent replacement include Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator with no prosecutorial experience, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who has surprisingly cut a nonpartisan profile since taking the job, and even Alina Habba. MacFarlane offered an unexpected insight on Pirro — she has stood side by side with the Democratic mayor of Washington on multiple occasions, taken seemingly righteous cases, and generated enough goodwill that she might actually have fifty Senate votes. “People who work in that office weren’t necessarily excited by the prospect of working for Jeanine Pirro,” he said, “but they sure did say it was better than what they had before.”
The bigger story is the collapse of the cabinet. Kristi Noem was fired in March. Bondi in April. Dan Bongino left as deputy FBI director. Tulsi Gabbard may be next. MacFarlane noted something that is not going unnoticed in Washington: the first firings have targeted the highest-profile women in the cabinet. The Department of Justice has lost 5,000 prosecutors, agents, and investigators since January 2025 — people trained to chase terrorists, stop child pornographers, and catch gun runners and drug dealers. Career prosecutors are leaving for local law enforcement, which MacFarlane called a reversal of the normal trajectory. Former civil division attorney Stacey Young told him, “Who wants to go work there right now?”
The administration also tried and failed to prosecute Trump’s political enemies. They brought cases to grand juries. The grand juries said no. They brought in hired-hand prosecutors. Judges said no. “It’s pretty freaking bonkers for grand jurors to say no this often to prosecutors,” MacFarlane said. Bondi may have been aggressive enough, but she couldn’t deliver convictions, and in Trump’s world, trying is not the same as succeeding.
Epstein survivor Annie Farmer took the high road: “Our concerns are much more than about one person. They want justice. They want the records they’ve been fighting for for years.” Fired Jack Smith deputy JP Cooney was even more direct: “I don’t blame Pam Bondi for my firing. I blame Donald Trump for my firing. And she was doing his handiwork.”
That is the picture of the Justice Department today. The attorney general is gone. Her replacement is the president’s defense lawyer. Five thousand career professionals have left. The Epstein investigation has a life of its own that Donald Trump cannot kill. And the midterm elections are seven months away. The last time Trump fired an attorney general, it was Jeff Sessions, and it came after a midterm bludgeoning. This time, he’s doing it before. If Democrats take the House, Jamie Raskin becomes Judiciary Committee chairman and Robert Garcia, who has been effective on the Epstein files, takes the Oversight gavel. That is the nightmare scenario this administration is racing toward.
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