Washington. US President Donald Trump said Thursday that Pam Bondi is out as his attorney general.

Trump, in a social media post, named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as the acting attorney general, though three people familiar with the matter have said he has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick.

It marks the end of a contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the  Department of Justice’s culture of independence from the White House, oversaw large-scale firings of career employees and moved aggressively to investigate the Republican president’s perceived enemies.

Bondi struggled to overcome early stumbles over the Epstein files that angered conservatives eager for government bombshells about the case.

She also had fed the conspiracy theory machine with a suggestion in a 2025 Fox News Channel interview that the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list” was sitting on her desk for review. The department later acknowledged that no such document exists.

Bondi was ridiculed over a move to hand out binders of Epstein files to conservative influencers at the White House, only for it to be later revealed that the documents included no new revelations. Despite promises that more files were going to become public, the Justice Department in July said no more would be released, prompting Congress to pass a bill to force the agency to do so.

The Justice Department’s release of millions of pages of Epstein files did little to tamp down criticism, prompting a House committee to subpoena Bondi to answer questions under oath.

To some Epstein victims, the problem is bigger than Bondi.

“This is not about a single person; it is about a government and judicial system that has repeatedly failed Epstein survivors,” one of Epstein’s earliest accusers, Annie Farmer, said in a statement.

“Regardless of who holds power, survivors deserve accountability, transparency, protection from retaliation, and assurance that those who enabled Epstein, Maxwell, and others will be investigated and, if appropriate, prosecuted,” Farmer said.

Robert Glassman, an attorney for a woman who testified as “Jane” in the 2021 criminal trial of Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, noted that leaders of government agencies change.

“But for victims of sexual abuse, what matters is whether the institutions meant to protect them actually do their job,” Glassman said by email.

Gloria Allred, an attorney for numerous Epstein victims, called Bondi’s departure “long overdue,” saying the now-departing attorney general betrayed them by failing to protect personal information in the files.

“She has destroyed the trust in the DOJ that victims had a right to expect, and her termination may be the only type of justice that survivors will receive from the DOJ,” Allred said by email.

Jess Michaels, an Epstein survivor who traveled to the Capitol last year to press for the files’ release, wanted Bondi gone, but she wasn’t optimistic about what comes next at DOJ.

“I’m happy that she is not in charge of this investigation anymore because she obviously failed. Do I think that the next person put in charge, Todd Blanche, is going to do any better? We can only hope. But given that they worked together, I don’t have great expectations,” Michaels said.

When Bondi became attorney general and pledged transparency, Michaels thought, “Well, maybe a woman stepping into this role will finally get the truth,” she recalled.

But once Bondi distributed now-infamous binders that proved to be largely rehashes of already public material, Michaels lost faith. Her mistrust was amplified by the DOJ’s problematic handling of the eventual release of a trove of documents.

“I think she had this opportunity to be a hero and to really do right by survivors of sexual violence and trafficking, and she chose not to,” Michaels said by phone. “It is outrageous, the volume of miscalculation she has made.”

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