Pam Bondi is Trump’s most besieged Cabinet member

David Catanese, Tribune News Service

Nearly six weeks into her tenure, Attorney General Pam Bondi finds herself in the unenviable position of being the sole Trump Cabinet member absorbing consistent political heat from critics on both the left — who are decrying cuts to the nation’s top law enforcement agency — and on the right — who remain furious about her failure to deliver on one of their great white whales: the Jeffrey Epstein files. By all indications, Bondi’s position remains secure with President Donald Trump, who called her “fantastic” this week.

The longer-term question is how much more patience and grace Trump’s base will grant Bondi, who already bears scars as the central figure in arguably the administration’s earliest blunder. “She’s not typically rolling with people like us,” said Steve Deace, a host on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV network who built a national following through his Christian-rooted conservative commentary in Iowa. “I think she got caught, frankly, playing a role that maybe she doesn’t sincerely understand, believe in, and got way over her skis.”

Seated at the center of his assembled four-person panel, Beck had concluded the nation’s top prosecutor was out of step with Trump’s Cabinet and uncoordinated with a surprisingly cohesive White House staff. What else, he wondered, could explain botching a high-profile promise to the party’s base to release never-before-seen flight logs, names and other potentially incriminating details about those who associated with Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

Deace offered Bondi an instant path to redemption: A single name in the yet-to-be released trove of documents surrounding the infamous suspected sex trafficker who died in prison under mysterious circumstances. “Give us one confirmed name,” Deace proposed, “something that demonstrates that she is going to follow through on this, this time.” More than a week since the segment and two weeks since Bondi teased the great Epstein release, the Department of Justice says it’s still in the process of reviewing thousands of pages of documents that aren’t quite ready for the public’s eyes. “We’re not trying to win a race here, we’re trying to protect victims,” said a Department of Justice spokesman, who did not have a timeline for public release. “But transparency will lead the day.”

White House officials won’t even speculate when they might be coming. The FBI declined to comment on the report Bondi ordered up to determine why certain Epstein files have been withheld for so long, but it’s expected to be made public. “She thought it was more together than she discovered it was,” said Adam Goodman, a longtime adviser who helped launch Bondi’s political career in Florida.

At the same time, there’s a legion of former Department of Justice officials who fear Bondi’s unique obeisance to this president is undermining the foundation of an independent Justice Department. During her confirmation hearing, Bondi said she would urge the president to review pardons for Jan. 6 rioters on a case-by-case basis, but said nothing when Trump issued blanket clemency for all 1,500 charged or convicted in the attack on the US Capitol.

“Even when they are trying to stick to norms, Donald Trump is saying, ‘No, I’m in charge. I make the decisions,’” said Anthony Coley, a former senior advisor to Merrick Garland, the Biden administration’s attorney general. “And Pam Bondi is careful enough that she wants to stay in Donald Trump’s good graces — unlike her two predecessors. They both had lines they would not cross with Trump.”

At the moment, Bondi’s position is much more politically precarious with the right, which might explain her omnipresence on Fox News and Fox Business programming, where she’s repeatedly turned to safely articulate her explanation for the Epstein files mishap — “Everything’s going to come out to the public,” she assured host Sean Hannity — and return to her preferred message of cleaning up the Biden era Justice Department and prosecuting violent crime. Ask a connected Florida politico to explain Bondi’s ascendance and it usually returns to this: She’s always lit up a camera and knows TV talent is a strength that still sells with this president, even as other conservative luminaries have decamped to podcasts and online media. “She’s doing a great job,” offered Megyn Kelly, a loyal Trump administration cheerleader, on her podcast, “but the Epstein file thing was a disaster. They embarrassed themselves. They stepped on a rake for no apparent reason.”

Epstein’s connections to powerful and wealthy politicians and celebrities fueled deep and widespread speculation about who exactly was caught up in his web. His death in prison in 2019 during the first Trump administration supercharged conspiracy theories among the right that he was murdered to prevent high-profile names from being exposed. And the conviction of longtime Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell of child sex trafficking left many on the right demanding to know to whom she was trafficking. Relishing an element of surprise, Bondi unexpectedly busted into a White House meeting called by press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Vice President JD Vance with a group of MAGA-friendly social media influencers on Feb. 27 to distribute binders with Epstein documents, which were hoisted in the air for triumphant photos before anyone realised they contained essentially no new information.

“Conservatives are so used to being out of power and complaining about it that they don’t always know how to behave when they can’t just blame everything on the people in charge,” said Robby Soave, the libertarian host of the online show Rising.

“The people in charge is you. If the Deep State is getting in the way, expose them, fire people, name names, do what your base wants.” Steve Bannon, a top adviser during Trump’s first term and one of his most powerful outside agitators, told his legions of viewers the release was “a fiasco” with one culprit to blame. “Pam Bondi oversold this,” he said. ‘Worrisome’ cuts Among the close-knit legal intelligentsia and former Justice Department officials, the Epstein files are a MAGA-fueled urban legend. It’s Bondi’s department-wide firings that have them more troubled.

Bondi’s move to quash the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams caused a half a dozen resignations of senior department officials, including the Southern District of New York’s top federal prosecutor. But Bondi is also overseeing cuts within her building, including to the Public Integrity Section that takes on corruption cases against public officials, according to multiple media reports and confirmed by a former Justice Department official. Bondi told Hannity one of her goals is to root out DOJ and FBI employees “who despise Donald Trump.” There are “scores of career folks who were canned or transferred to some sanctuary city task force,” said the former DOJ source, granted anonymity to speak about a sensitive topic.

“The personnel decisions seem quite worrisome — dismissing senior career professionals who have served DOJ honorably regardless of who is president and who is attorney general.” The Justice Department spokesman said while it’s true Bondi is overseeing a broad review of Department resources, no reductions have been announced.