Trump Prepares to Replace Pam Bondi With Someone Even Worse

UPDATE 1:21 p.m.: Well, that certainly didn’t take long. Trump has reportedly pulled the trigger, firing Attorney General Pam Bondi and making her the second cabinet member casualty of this administration. She will reportedly be replaced in the interim by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. As a seeming award for taking the fall, Trump seems to have floated the idea of appointing Bondi as a federal judge. Sure, why not give someone a lifetime judiciary appointment because they were too much of an embarrassment as AG? Is there any way one can fail in Trump’s circle, other than upward? Original story below. 

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It’s starting to sound like the next cabinet-level head to roll in Trump administration 2.0 could be that of Attorney General Pam Bondi, trailing on the heels of fired and now under investigation DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Gee, it’s almost as if working under Trump is extra fraught for women in what are supposedly positions of power, who must contend not only with the President of the United States carefully critiquing their contouring in TV appearances, but also their effectiveness in carrying out whatever illegal scheme is at the top of his mind at any given moment. But before you go taking any kind of victory lap at the idea of Bondi facing the music after 15 months of mostly dedicating herself to hiding the Epstein files, know this: The rumored replacement, as is typically the case for Trump, is even worse.

Bondi is on shaky ground at the Department of Justice, according to “four people familiar with the conversation” who recently spoke with The New York Times detailing the discussions that Trump has reportedly had with other aides and advisors about firing the Attorney General. Trump’s administration has refused to offer a direct rebuke of those reported conversations, referring the media only to a simple statement from Trump, which reads as follows: “Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job.” Well … alright then! Sounds like there’s probably nothing at all to see here, eh?

The discussions of Trump possibly firing Pam Bondi are weirdly silent on Todd Blanche, who also fucked up the Epstein files (though he did succeed in silencing Ghislaine). Well if Lee Zeldin (who is stupider than Bondi) fucked up Blanche’s well-honed Trump protection racket?

— emptywheel (@emptywheel.bsky.social) Apr 2, 2026 at 9:50 AM

The roots of Trump’s dissatisfaction with Bondi go deep, touching on how disastrously the Department of Justice has handled the many phases of releasing the Epstein files, and Bondi’s infamous declaration that the Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk” to review, before reversing her stance to say that there was no such thing as a list of Epstein clients after all. This no doubt brought more visibility to the Epstein story over the course of the last year, none of which were good headlines for Trump. Bondi has since been subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, which voted to compel her to testify this month about the Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein, which is currently scheduled for April 14, though she’s reportedly been attempting to wriggle out of having to appear.

One would think Trump is arguably even more frustrated with Bondi, however, on the front of his vindictive desire to use the Justice Department against his political enemies during his second term, efforts that have been stymied at every step of the way. As a result, he has seemingly lashed out against Bondi personally on a few occasions on his own social media platform Truth Social, particularly in the wake of embarrassing legal defeats, as when a judge threw out political prosecutions the DOJ brought against former FBI director James B. Comey and New York AG Letitia James, citing Bondi’s illegal appointment of a fake U.S. Attorney in the form of Lindsey Halligan.

Here’s the bad news: The name that Trump has floated as a potential replacement for Bondi as United States Attorney General is apparently none other than current EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, who stands out even in a crowded field of suck-ups as one of the most spineless, sycophantic yes-men in the entire Trump administration. It should probably go without saying that Zeldin, a former member of the House of Representatives from New York, has little relevant experience to leading the entire Department of Justice–he does possess a law degree, but his only career experience as a prosecutor appears to have been briefly within the military justice system in the mid-2000s, and he has spent the majority of his career as a private lawyer and as a legislator. What he does have is a completely unwavering willingness to do literally anything that Trump tells him to do, which is the scariest quality possible for the United States Attorney General to possess.

Multiple outlets reporting that Trump is considering replacing Pam Bondi with Lee Zeldin, whose entire legal career consisted of 3 years practicing law when he was in his 20s.

In terms of experience he’d be the Pete Hegseth of the DoJ.

— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman.bsky.social) Apr 2, 2026 at 9:57 AM

That said, he might actually have more relevant experience in the AG job than he does in his current post at the Environmental Protection Agency, a position in which he has demonstrated his eagerness to please Trump and simultaneously destroy the environment he is meant to be “protecting” whenever possible. In February, he stood by with a beaming smile, clapping as Trump announced that he was repealing the “endangerment finding,” a critical clause allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, effectively signing the death warrant for the entire planet. His other proudest achievements at the EPA have included weakening regulations on the emission of toxic ethylene oxide gas by the medical manufacturing industry, a known carcinogen that in 2016 was found to be 60 times more toxic to children than previously believed, and the relaxing of pollution limits for how much toxic mercury coal power plants are allowed to belch into the Earth’s atmosphere. The latter is the kind of issue where one might wish to see Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voice a little concern, given that mercury toxicity is a life-long pet cause of his, but you should prepare to be disappointed by the single most pathetic man within the Trump administration. Zeldin, meanwhile, has totally dedicated himself to advancing causes such as Trump’s desired “energy dominance,” despite the fact that energy is of literally zero concern to the agency that is called, if I might remind you, the ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY.

“He’s our secret weapon,” said Trump of Zeldin, at a White House event in February promoting the coal industry, which in any sane world would be one of the EPA’s primary enemies. “He’s getting those approvals done in record setting time.”

Suffice to say, if Pam Bondi finds herself out of a job as United States Attorney General, I shudder to think what Zeldin would have in store for us as her replacement. In just over a year at the EPA, he has found every way conceivable to perform the opposite of the agency’s stated goal of environmental protection. Just what do you think he would do the to DOJ’s stated aim of “justice”?