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Attorney General Pam Bondi Fired. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired April 02, 2026 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Breaking news to CNN, another major shakeup at the White House.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has been ousted.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Let's go now to CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes.

Kristen, tell us what you're learning. This is brand-new.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, things are very fluid. They're moving very quickly.

But I am told that Pam Bondi has been officially fired. She's out of her role. Now where she goes next, that is a question mark. I was told in the meeting or in the conversation President Trump had with Bondi yesterday, he floated the idea of a judgeship as a potential landing place for Bondi.

And, in the interim period, while they are figuring out who is going to take over as attorney general, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will step into that role. So he will be serving in the interim. Pam Bondi, though, is out. We had already reported that she was in Florida.

We have been talking about for the last several hours how, in the last week, President Trump had been calling allies, asking about firing her, who should replace her. It doesn't seem as though they have someone specific in mind. We know that they have floated the idea of Lee Zeldin, among other people.

Zeldin is currently leading the EPA, but I am told that is not a done deal. President Trump, interestingly, did issue a very flattering, for President Trump, statement about Bondi last night, saying: "Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job."

The reason that I note that is that because, when we saw Kristi Noem being fired, there was none of that kind of generosity of spirit when it came to President Trump. Now, just a reminder, Bondi has a very close relationship with Susie Wiles, the chief of staff. They are both political operatives in Florida.

They kind of came up together. So they have a long-lasting relationship. But President Trump had grown increasingly frustrated about a number of issues. One, didn't believe that some of the cases against his adversaries or political adversaries were being brought fast enough. He didn't believe that she had handled the Epstein files well, among other things.

So we do know they had this conversation yesterday, in which essentially President Trump told her that she was not long for this world, that he would eventually be replacing her. What we know now is that she has been officially fired.

And, again, Todd Blanche will step into that role, as the deputy attorney general, into an acting attorney general role.

SANCHEZ: And, Kristen, this now marks the second Cabinet position that Trump has fired and now has sought a replacement for within the last month.

What can you tell us about Blanche himself, his relationship to Trump? Obviously, he's going to be in the acting role until a new attorney general is put in place.

HOLMES: Well, look, Blanche and President Trump are incredibly close. He served as his personal attorney before taking this role as the deputy attorney general.

And there are a number of people who are around President Trump's orbit who have said that Blanche isn't political enough. Well, we saw Blanche taking a new role recently when he stepped out at CPAC and essentially said that everybody who had ever investigated Donald Trump or brought charges against him had been fired from the Department of Justice, making the Department of Justice clearly very political.

And President Trump has liked what Todd Blanche has done. He has -- Blanche has always been kind of viewed as the person in the background making all of the mechanisms work. Now, of course, he will be front and center.

But it doesn't sound as though he's going to take this position long term, that they are going to still find a figurehead, so to speak, as the actual attorney general, but that he will be filling in, in the interim time period.

And I do want to note, one of the things that's so fascinating about this removal of Kristi Noem and this removal now of Pam Bondi is that we spent the better part of over a year with no upheavals, with no turnover within the Cabinet. And that was intentional, something that President Trump, Susie Wiles did not want in his second term, to look like a revolving door, the way it had looked in President Trump's first term.

But,obviously, now we are entering a new phase of President Trump's presidency, with him feeling as though the people who aren't working aren't working, and he's going to get rid of them.

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KEILAR: And, Kristen, how long was this coming? Because there was a sense certainly when Pam Bondi appeared before Congress and testified that she was really trying to appeal to President Trump and that she might have been on thin ice at that point.

HOLMES: So it kind of depends on what you mean in terms of how long has this been coming, because there has been frustration with Bondi off and on since almost the beginning of President Trump's tenure, specifically when it came to the handling of the Epstein files.

There was a big swathe of people -- and, obviously, we saw that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had said that in the interview with "Vanity Fair," when she said the Department of Justice whiffed on the Epstein files. There was a general feeling that that was the case.

And they placed a lot of that blame on Pam Bondi, not on Kash Patel or on Dan Bongino, but on the attorney general, because she was the one who was responsible for bringing in all of those influencers and giving them those binders, if we remember that from early in the administration.

She was also the one who said on FOX News that she has the Epstein files on her desk and she'd be releasing them soon, all things that put everybody into a tight spot and then caused enormous amount of problems down the road.

But when it comes to actually replacing her, what we're told is that, in January, this started becoming a real conversation, that the name started floating around as to who would potentially replace her. Now, that had died down a little bit and then in the last week ramped back up.

And I will tell you, I was getting calls and text messages from people who aren't in the administration, who don't work at the White House, who were saying that they were hearing it. And they were hearing it because President Trump was making calls really starting on Monday, asking allies what they think about the fact that he might replace her, who should replace her, what does this actually look like?

And that is when we really saw obviously all of this kind of snowball, leading to a conversation between the two of them and then her ultimate firing.

SANCHEZ: Kristen, please stand by for us.

We have some extra voices to add to the conversation. Evan Perez, Jeff Zeleny, and Elie Honig are with us.

Evan, first to you.

You could see this coming, but we were unsure. Earlier it was described as a gray area that she was in, that she might be able to salvage her job. Clearly, she couldn't. EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right.

I mean, look, Kristen is -- what Kristen describes is what we have all been going through since January, when these rumors first came up. It appeared that the president might actually do it in January, and then it died away.

And we -- as you know from covering the Trump administration, you just never know whether it's real, whether there's just a faction inside the White House. They spend a lot of time knifing each other. And so we never know it's real until the president actually latches on to it.

And so that's when it really became, it appears, a lot more real this week, when he was seeming to take action to try to find some names of some possible replacements.

For Bondi, what we have seen is, she's taken a different tack from what we have seen in previous -- in the previous administration, previous -- first -- the first Trump administration. When Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo fell out of favor, one of the things they did was, they avoided Trump. They just reduced their amount of exposure to him as a way to sort of, like, let it -- let him sort of calm down.

Bondi has taken the opposite tack. She has, like, spent a lot more time with him. She seemed to try to be more present as a way to ingratiate herself with the president. In the end, it did not work. And, really, the original sin goes back to February of last year, when she orchestrated that event at the White House...

SANCHEZ: The binders.

PEREZ: ... with these binders with documents that were years-old. They'd been in the public sphere for years. And she didn't seem to know that. She didn't know that.

And, at that time, if you remember, the administration is new in office. They -- there is really no constituency. There was nobody demanding the Epstein files. And she created this event out of nowhere. No one really was expecting that.

And so they have not been able to live down that moment since. And the damage to the president because of that, I think, has been incalculable, because MAGA base has not let it go.

KEILAR: She wasn't the president's first choice for this job. Let's remember it was Matt Gaetz, who could not be confirmed. That was not going to fly.

And now I wonder, Jeff, how tough it is going to be to confirm someone to replace her, considering there are a number of senators -- she and Kash Patel were put in their positions with promises of not going to retaliate or use DOJ or the FBI to go after President Trump's enemies. And yet we have seen that is exactly what it has been used for.

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So, I wonder how difficult this process will be to find someone to replace her.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I think the confirmation process will be very difficult and dramatically different from what we have just seen with the secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, even if a senator happens to be chosen.

And a few have been mentioned possibly. A, one is going to be very reluctant to accept this position, because attorney general is different than every other position in the Cabinet. And there's enough muscle memory now, beginning with Jeff Sessions...

SANCHEZ: Yes.

ZELENY: ... who could not be any more loyal initially, until he fell out of favor because he recused himself.

And that's something that the president still has in mind. A, he will choose someone who will never recuse themselves from anything. So I think that these confirmation hearings for the next attorney general will be dramatically different, largely because of what Evan was saying, everything that has been a learned over the last year.

The Epstein files are not going away now. That genie is well out of the bottle, regardless of who the attorney general is. So I think it's very difficult. But, to your point, I was thinking the exact same thing. She was not his first choice. He knew her well, obviously. She was involved in the campaign from Florida, wasn't inherently political years ago, became very political.

But she was not -- she was chosen because she would be reputable and pretty easy to be confirmed after Matt Gaetz. So it's going to be fascinating to see who the president picks. Lee Zeldin is one of the leading contenders, a former member of Congress. Different for a House member than a senator, we have seen over the years here.

So, the confirmation process, I mean, get ready for this. It is going to be much more complicated than the one we just saw last week or the last two weeks.

PEREZ: I will say, just because we have been talking about this, our team and the White House team have been talking about this for some weeks, and we have talked to sources.

And one of the things that keeps coming back is, people keep going, I don't know where the president is going to find someone as pliable, as willing to do his bidding, everything he wants as -- and still somewhat credible, and still credible as Pam Bondi.

Certainly, she was last year, before she had this past year behind her. So I don't know where he finds somebody like that, because Bondi has really done everything he wanted. Now, he's not happy because some of the things that he wants just can't be done. The facts aren't there on these cases.

The -- some of the screw-ups has been -- has been because of the White House. And then, of course, you can't -- if you can't indict people because the grand juries or the juries aren't there, and, again, some of the evidence is just not there, that's not Pam Bondi's fault. That is the fault of no one.

SANCHEZ: Reality, facts.

PEREZ: That's reality.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Yes. Yes.

PEREZ: Right. And the president just can't really sort of come...

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ZELENY: The law.

SANCHEZ: The law, yes.

PEREZ: Right. And the law. The law is a very sticky thing, right? And so...

SANCHEZ: You're not guilty because somebody just says you're guilty.

ZELENY: Not as pliable, right.

PEREZ: Right.

SANCHEZ: Right.

PEREZ: And so the idea that Pam Bondi has not done everything Trump wants is just not true.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

PEREZ: It's just not true that he is -- he just can't be happy.

SANCHEZ: Let's go to Elie Honig, because, Elie, now in this tenure that lasted roughly a year, 13 months or so, for Pam Bondi, how would you describe the way that she led DOJ,what her legacy will be as the attorney general?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Boris, I think Pam Bondi's legacy as an attorney general will be as an abject failure.

And I think there's broad agreement on that. Start with the Epstein files. Everyone on both sides of the aisle agrees that she badly mishandled the Epstein files. As Evan and Jeff just noted, she was the one who brought this back to the fore by making these grand promises about disclosing the Epstein files that ultimately she could not fill.

When Congress passed the law requiring DOJ to produce the Epstein files, she completely botched it. DOJ acted more than a month late. They over-redacted the names that should not have been taken out. They under-redacted. They left victim information there.

When she testified about this a month or so ago in front of Congress, it was an utter disaster. She embarrassed herself. She basically relied on ad hominem insults and irrelevancies about the stock market. So that's number one.

Beyond that, if you look beyond the Epstein files, she also has failed. Clearly, Donald Trump does not see Pam Bondi as a success. The reporting is from CNN and others that one of the main reasons is Donald Trump is unhappy that Pam Bondi was not aggressive enough in pursuing his opponents.

But, on the flip side -- and I can tell you this as a DOJ alum -- Pam Bondi will go down in history as the attorney general who completely gave away DOJ's independence, independence from politics and keeping prosecution separate from politics.

She tried to indict those people. As you just noted, she tried to indict Letitia James and Jim Comey and Michael Flynn and Elissa Slotkin and on down the line. She failed over and over again.

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And not only did she preside over DOJ's loss of institutional independence. She facilitated it. And I think that will be her lasting legacy, as the DOJ -- as the attorney general who was there and who promoted DOJ's absolute loss of political independence.

KEILAR: Scorched earth Elie Honig.

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KEILAR: I know a lot of people share that opinion, as you do, and you put it right out there with the facts of her tenure. But it really -- it's tough, as you lay it out.

We have much more after the break.

Pam Bondi has been ousted as attorney general, sources saying the president has been unhappy with her handling of the Epstein files and her inability to effectively pursue his adversaries.

We will have much more on this breaking news right after a break.

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SANCHEZ: We're following breaking news on CNN.

Pam Bondi has been ousted as attorney general, with President Trump putting out a statement just moments ago.

Let's go to Kristen Holmes, who's at the White House tracking this force.

What is the president saying, Kristen?

HOLMES: Yes, the president posted this on TRUTH Social. And he signed it, indicating that he wrote it himself. This is what it says. It says: "Pam Bondi is a great American patriot and a loyal friend who

faithfully served as my attorney general over the past year. Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in crime across our country, with murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1990 -- or 1900.

"We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much-needed and important new job in the private sector to be announced at a date in the near future. And our deputy attorney general and a very talented and respected legal mind, Todd Blanche, will step in and serve as acting attorney general."

OK, there's a couple things to break down on this, one, the fact that President Trump issued a statement like this at all. I think it also goes to, one, he respects Pam Bondi, but, two, she is a close friend of the chief of staff, Susie Wiles. And Susie Wiles respects Pam Bondi. So you see the statement here.

The other part of this, we had been told that President Trump was floating the idea of another job for Pam Bondi, specifically a judgeship down the road. Clearly, there's no landing pad here. There's no off-ramp here, saying she's going to the private sector and it's going to be announced later.

Well, Pam Bondi just learned she was being fired. So it doesn't seem clear that she actually has a role, though she has been a consultant in Florida for a very long time. She was a political operative. She will likely stay in Florida doing some work along those lines.

But it is interesting to see here no kind of cushy side job that President Trump is offering for Bondi, instead just saying she's going to go work in the private sector.

KEILAR: Really interesting, Kristen.

If you could stand by for us, I want to bring in David Chalian to talk a little bit about this.

I guess the question now is -- and we know Todd Blanche is stepping in as acting. We're waiting to see who maybe the person is going to be who replaces Pam Bondi. But what does this mean with Pam Bondi gone for the Trump Department of Justice and for how the law may be enforced going forward by this administration?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, I think we will learn a lot that that answers that question by who he picks to succeed her. I think that will inform us a lot.

I was thinking, here's a president who has not had nearly as much tumult and change in his Cabinet this term as he did in his first term, by design. And yet the two departments now where he has ousted members, I would say are probably two of the highest-profile 2024 campaign agenda items, second-term agenda items, immigration and deportation and the retribution agenda.

I mean, that was the -- a core -- two core components of what he was selling to the American people in '24 when he won the Oval Office again. And for different reasons -- I'm not saying -- but, like, they are now -- these are now the departments that are upended.

I think it, A, speaks to Donald Trump's, like, commitment to those issues and pursuit. And that still very much is the agenda of interest to him. So, who he chooses to replace Pam Bondi, whether it is somebody who is just going to be -- I don't know how you could be much more subservient to him than Pam Bondi has been as attorney general, but I would be on the lookout for that.

Is it somebody who will have zero pushback at all and find ways around the actual legal and court blockades to the agenda or not? Will you find someone who actually does bring, I don't know, a bit more regular order to the way things are? I'd be very surprised if we saw a pick like that, given where the president has been on this.

SANCHEZ: On the question of that retribution agenda, Elie Honig, one tidbit in our reporting stuck out to me, and that is that, just yesterday, Pam Bondi summoned the head prosecutor of CIA Director John Brennan's case in Miami to D.C. to discuss the progress of the case and her belief the investigation was being slow-walked.

As we're talking about a potential new attorney general that inherits this retribution agenda, I mean, how do you see these cases shaping out with Brennan and with others?

HONIG: If the proof isn't there, there's no case there. And no attorney general, no U.S. attorney can make a case happen if there's no facts and if the law don't support it, as David Chalian was just mentioning.

And so Donald Trump can get rid of Pam Bondi. He can bring in whoever he wants as attorney general. But if the proof isn't there, let's say, in the cases against Letitia James and Jim Comey, which have been dismissed by a judge and then rejected twice on Letitia James by grand juries, there's no human being, there's no prosecutor who can weave alchemy and just make this stuff appear out of thin air.

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Now, the question will be, what is the next attorney general going to do? Because, on the one hand, he or she is going to face incessant pressure from the White House to bring these cases, as we have seen Pam Bondi deal with. On the other hand, he or she is going to run into these roadblocks, specifically grand juries and judges and maybe trial juries and appellate courts eventually.

So, you can't just charge someone unilaterally as a prosecutor in this country. It's part of our system. You can push forward aggressively with investigations. It seems DOJ has been doing that. And, ultimately, when it comes time to pay those off, to get a grand jury to indict, to get a judge not to dismiss -- or we haven't even gotten to a jury phase than any of these -- those cases have failed because the proof hasn't been there and the law hasn't supported them.

So I would think hard. Whoever's going to be in line to be the next attorney general needs to understand that's going to be a reality of this job.

KEILAR: Yes.

This is huge news that we are tracking. Pam Bondi has been fired as attorney general. Huge questions about who is going to replace her and what this means for what the president wants for his Department of Justice going forward.

We are going to have a quick break. We will be right back with more on this breaking news. Stay with us.

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