Epstein Blunders and Tossed Indictments: The Downfall of Pam Bondi
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Hey, it's Michael. Before today's episode, I want to tell you about a new show from our colleagues over at Serial Productions. It's a new five-part series featuring New York Times columnist Em Gessen, and it's a remarkable one. In the show, Em tells a story about a cousin named Alan who is currently in prison for murder for hire. It's a story about family, about what we do when members of our family do bad things. It's about betrayal and the craving to know the truth. It's thoughtful, it's complicated, and it's very funny. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts, and we hope you check it out. The series is called The Idiot. Okay, here's today's show. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.
This is The Daily.
Today, how Pam Bondi went from being the loyal attorney general of President Trump's dreams to a blundering figure whom he abruptly fired on Thursday afternoon. I turn to the journalist who broke the story that Bondi was about to be ousted, White House reporter Tyler Pager.
It's Friday, April 3rd.
Well, Tyler, here we go again. Another one bites the dust. Yes, a second cabinet member fired by President Trump in four weeks. And arguably, this firing ends the career of a cabinet member who is even more important to the president than the last one, Kristi Noem, head of Homeland Security, because this is the attorney general. And this attorney general, until the very end, strikes me as a very paradoxical figure because she is simultaneously as absolutely loyal a foot soldier as you could fathom, and yet somebody who keeps letting the president down. You're absolutely right, Michael. Pam Bondi was executing on a wide-ranging agenda that the president outlined when he ran for president for a third time.
He wanted to lead a retribution campaign against his political opponents, and much of that depended on having an attorney general who willing to shatter decades-long norms about how a Justice Department operates, which traditionally is independent from the White House. In no way, shape, or form did Pam Bondi even try to be independent. She bragged about how much she worked at the directive of Donald Trump, but even that wasn't enough for him. And on top of that, she created a political crisis of her own making in her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Right. And we will get to the Epstein files for sure. I want to, though, keep digging into the specifics of Bondi's loyal service to Trump and what she gave the president within the DOJ, because it was a lot.
Yeah, I mean, Michael, a good place to start is in March of 2025 at the Justice Department headquarters.
Welcome to the Department of Justice.
She invited the president to come speak. And before he speaks, Pambani gives a speech.
And we all work for the greatest president in the history of our country.
And what she says is that she is working for the greatest president in the history of our country. And we are so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump. That she works, quote, at the directive of Donald Trump. Now that is unprecedented. In previous administrations, attorneys general would try to not even appear at certain White House events because they didn't want to seem too close or cozy with the president and his allies. Pambani is taking it in the exact opposite direction, touting how much he takes direction from Donald Trump.
He will never stop fighting for us, and we will never stop fighting for him and for our country.
And then over the course of her tenure, she did many of the things that he wanted her to do.
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