Pam Bondi

Pamela Jo Bondi (born 1965) is an American lawyer who was a prosecutor in Tampa for nearly two decades, attorney general of Florida from 2011 to 2019, a partner and registered foreign agent at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, and Attorney General of the United States from February 4, 2025, until Donald Trump removed her on April 2, 2026. Her tenure at the Department of Justice was dominated by the handling of the Epstein Files.¹²³

Florida and the Trump Foundation Check

Bondi worked as an assistant state attorney in Hillsborough County before winning election as Florida attorney general in 2010; she was re-elected in 2014.² On August 25, 2013, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump University for fraud, and Bondi's office said it was reviewing complaints from Florida students. On September 18, 2013, a political committee supporting her re-election, And Justice for All, received a 25,000 dollar check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity barred by law from political giving. Her office did not join the suit or open its own case. The foundation's tax return reported the payment as a grant to an unrelated Kansas charity with a similar name. After The Washington Post reported the gift in 2016, Trump paid the Internal Revenue Service a 2,500 dollar penalty and reimbursed the foundation. Trump said: "I never spoke to her, first of all, she's a fine person beyond reproach." Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed complaints with Florida's ethics commission and asked the Justice Department to open a bribery investigation of Trump and Bondi; no charges were brought.⁴⁵⁶

Ballard Partners and Qatar

After leaving office in January 2019, Bondi joined Ballard Partners, the firm of Brian Ballard. On July 23, 2019, she filed a short-form registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as a partner of the firm, naming as her foreign principal the "Embassy of the State of Qatar." She described her services as work "to advise, council, and assist in matters related to combating human trafficking," and answered yes to the question whether they included political activity: "Will provide support regarding Qatari relations with U.S. government officials, U.S. business entities, and non-governmental audiences."⁷ Under an amendment to its contract, the firm received 115,000 dollars a month from Qatar, with Bondi named as key personnel; at her confirmation hearing she said that "that was the amount my firm received."⁸⁹ Ballard's registration, No. 6415, also listed as foreign principals the Republic of Turkey, the Turkish state bank Halkbank, the embassy of Azerbaijan, the government of the Dominican Republic, the Republic of Kosovo and the foreign minister of Zimbabwe; a short-form statement for Susie Wiles, later White House chief of staff, was filed under it on January 22, 2019.⁷

In November 2019 Bondi took leave to join the White House as a special adviser for Trump's first impeachment and served on his defense team at the Senate trial. She filed a second short-form registration under Ballard's registration on March 26, 2020, and Sludge reported that she resumed lobbying for Qatar that year. FARA records show her two registrations terminated on December 31, 2020, and February 6, 2021.⁷⁸ Senate Judiciary Democrats stated that she lobbied for more than 30 clients at the firm, among them Amazon, Uber and the private-prison contractor GEO Group, whose largest customer is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and that she had not listed the Ballard partnership as a conflict of interest.¹⁰

Attorney General

Trump nominated Bondi after Matt Gaetz withdrew in November 2024. The Senate confirmed her on February 4, 2025, by 54 to 46, with John Fetterman the only Democrat voting in favor.² In May 2025 she issued a legal memorandum concluding that Trump could accept a Boeing 747 valued at about 400 million dollars from the government of Qatar, on the ground that ownership would pass to his presidential library foundation before the end of his term.⁸

The Epstein Files

On February 21, 2025, asked on Fox News whether the department would release a list of Epstein's clients, Bondi said: "It's sitting on my desk right now to review." On February 27 she announced the "first phase" of declassified Epstein files, most of which had been public before, and ordered FBI Director Kash Patel to deliver thousands of undisclosed pages by the next morning. She told Fox News that evening that a "whistleblower" had told her the Southern District of New York was "sitting on thousands of pages of documents."¹¹¹² According to information given to Senator Dick Durbin's office, about 1,000 FBI records personnel then reviewed some 100,000 Epstein records on 24-hour shifts in March 2025 and were "instructed to 'flag' any records in which President Trump was mentioned." On July 7, 2025, the department and the FBI issued an unsigned memorandum finding "no incriminating 'client list'" and ruling out further disclosure. Durbin's letter of July 18 asked Bondi who had drafted the memorandum, why it was unsigned, who ordered the flagging and which ethics officials she had consulted on her "potential conflict of interest"; the department did not publicly answer.¹¹¹³ On July 16, 2025, the department fired Maurene Comey, a prosecutor on the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases; her lawsuit names Bondi as a defendant.¹⁴

On November 14, 2025, at Trump's public request, Bondi assigned Jay Clayton, United States Attorney in Manhattan, to investigate Epstein's dealings with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman and JPMorgan Chase. Five days later Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which permits the withholding of records that would jeopardize "an active federal investigation."¹⁵ On January 30, 2026, Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche signed a letter to Congress stating that the department had completed its production and had withheld or redacted "approximately 200,000 pages" on grounds of privilege, and on February 14 they sent the Judiciary Committees a list of about 300 names appearing in the files.¹⁶¹⁷

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on February 11, 2026, Representative Thomas Massie asked whether she could identify who had redacted Leslie Wexner's name as a co-conspirator in an FBI document. Bondi testified that the name had been restored within 40 minutes; Massie replied, "Within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed." Bondi said of him: "This guy has 'Trump derangement syndrome,'" and "You're a failed politician."¹⁸ On March 4, 2026, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted 24 to 19, with five Republicans joining the Democrats, to subpoena her; the subpoena, issued March 17, set a deposition for April 14.¹⁹

Removal

On April 2, 2026, Trump announced on Truth Social that Bondi, "a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend," would be "transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector," and named Blanche acting attorney general. CNN and CBS News reported that Trump had been dissatisfied with how aggressively she pursued his priorities, including prosecutions of his perceived political enemies, and with her handling of the Epstein files; Blanche said he had never heard Trump connect the decision to the files. Bondi wrote that she would move "to an important private sector role I am thrilled about, and where I will continue fighting for President Trump." The Oversight Committee's ranking Democrat, Robert Garcia, said she "remains legally obligated to appear before our Committee under oath." Gloria Allred, who represents Epstein victims, called the departure "long overdue."³²⁰ Representative Ro Khanna later said that he and Massie had "basically forced Donald Trump to fire his own attorney general."²¹