For , the attorney general of the United States whom Donald Trump dismissed on Thursday, it has been of no use to grovel before the boss. Unlike her predecessors, who strove to maintain a safe distance from the White House to give an image of impartiality, the lawyer (Tampa, Florida, 60 years old) positioned herself from the beginning as the president’s main supporter and protector, praising and defending him in congressional hearings, even placing a banner with his face on the facade of the Department of Justice headquarters.
Bondi’s is not the first sudden dismissal of this Administration – a month ago -, nor probably the last, since another woman is already being targeted, . And new casualties are expected, although not imminently, according to the Washington Post, nor to the rhythm thrilling of the purge that the Republican carried out in his first term, .
Despite the slamming of the door, and as Trump announced in Truth Social after giving him a passport, Bondi’s now causeless genuflection will not end despite his dismissal, since on the 14th a hearing awaits him before the Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives, which, revelations aside, will prolong his public agony.
In recent days, Bondi has been seen out of sorts, while in the gossip mills of Washington she makes fun of her supposed pleas to Trump not to fire her. It may be an urban legend—one that probably wouldn’t spread if the victim would have been a man—but the perfect image of Bondi now cracks like a cracked porcelain figure.
In fact, the appearance in Congress, in which five Republicans joined the Democrats, is for some the reason that explains his dismissal. “I was about to be interrogated in the Epstein case. That’s why Trump got rid of her 12 days earlier,” Democratic legislator Seth Mouldon said on Thursday. , the hot potato that ended up burning Bondi’s hands, and career.
Because both Trump’s admirers and his staunch critics agree on one thing, that the fall is due to two causes. One was his inability to do so, despite his childish tantrum-like insistence that he do so. But it has been the other cause—his stumbles in the Epstein scandal— the one that garners the most headlines: his mistaken steps in the management of the case, which earned him the animosity of the bases of the MAGA movement, which had been calling for his dismissal for months, and the West Wing.
When it comes to enemies, Trump demands heads like an angry wren, and the lack of evidence against those adversaries placed Bondi between a rock and a hard place of justice, crushing it. But her misfortune comes from before, when, in February 2025, newly appointed, she declared in an interview that she had a list of the pedophile Epstein’s clients on her desk. A week later, to receive some folders from the Department of Justice titled The Epstein Files: Phase 1. The attempt at transparency proved counterproductive, because some of the content was already public. As revealed by a source from the Department of Justice to The HillBondi was so involved in the act, including the design of the folders, that she was “dangerously exposed.”
The ridicule was served. The White House intendant, Susie Wiles, chief of staff, left her at the horses’ feet saying in an interview that the initial efforts in the Epstein case were “an absolute failure” and that Bondi handed over to the influencers “folders full of nothing.” In July, the department he headed claimed that no client list existed, and Trump turned the page. It was when influencers Conservatives, irritated by the denial, questioned Bondi’s competence.
Mass abandonment of prosecutors
Epstein’s smokescreen has also not been able to mask the mass exodus of Justice Department officials: due to political interference they fled. More sibylline has been the Department’s attempt to obtain sensitive data from the States’ voter registry to share it with Homeland Security, in charge of the immigration offensive. It could be said, then, that Bondi’s performance as attorney general ran along the wire and not on a red carpet from the beginning.
The drift of the Trump Administration means that the most critical do not shed a tear for Bondi, although the occasional Democrat sympathizes with her for the president’s ingratitude: but what offering could there be more valuable for a sacrificial altar than loyalty, the cynics will say. When Bondi agreed to instrumentalize the political judicial system, and to protect those close to him, he knew that he would fall into a bear trap: embodied in those honest judges who still set limits on Trump. The same justice that has dismissed Democrat Letitia James and the president of the Federal Reserve, three of the Republican’s bêtes noires.
Bondi defended Trump, and was his second choice to lead the Justice Department after Trump’s withdrawal. By the way, Bondi, despite having sponsored to Gaetz’s dog, privately said he was a poor choice for the job. The eldest daughter of the three children of a Democratic marriage – her father, Joseph, a university professor, was a councilor and mayor of her district – she became relevant thanks to a high-profile murder case in 2000 that boosted her career. Bondi, who obtained the death penalty for the main defendant – later commuted to life in prison – attracted the attention of television networks and soon became a regular commentator on MSNBC, CNN and, increasingly, on Fox News, the Republican pulpit. Today the cameras chase her, but in a different way.
