President Donald Trump announced April 2 that he had fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, a former Florida prosecutor who oversaw the federal government’s contentious release of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and who carried out investigations into people Trump has publicly criticized.
In a Truth Social post announcing his decision, Trump called Bondi a “Great American Patriot and a loyal friend” and said she would be transitioning to the private sector.
“Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900,” Trump wrote, referencing crime data he’s touted before. (It’s unclear because the data doesn’t go back that far.) Trump made Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche the acting Justice Department head.
We have fact-checked Bondi since 2010, during her Florida attorney general run, a seat she held from 2011 to 2019. Here are some key moments and falsehoods from her year-plus in the nation’s top law enforcement spot.
Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 11, 2026, in front of survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. (AP)
Bondi oversaw controversial release of ‘Epstein files’
Prior to becoming the nation’s top prosecutor, Bondi vocally criticized a lack of transparency in the federal government’s case against Epstein. Epstein’s prosecution started in Palm Beach, Florida, where the financier owned a waterfront mansion.
Soon after assuming the attorney general role, Bondi said she had a list of Epstein’s clients on her desk “to review,” promising she had “a lot of information” to be released. This was in keeping with Trump saying during the campaign that he would be open to releasing the files.
At a February 2025 White House event, Bondi gave MAGA influencers binders containing what she called the “first phase” of the files. But the binders were largely made up of already publicly available documents.
In a February 2025 letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, Bondi requested all withheld Epstein documents and demanded an investigation into why they had not been delivered to her office.The files were subsequently delivered to Bondi, and the DOJ released a statement in July 2025 saying, “This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list’” and “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”
The Justice Department has released millions of heavily redacted files to the public. Despite a Dec. 10 court order requiring the release of all grand jury records in the Epstein case in accordance with the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act, CNN reported that about 2.5 million files have yet to be released.
When senators questioned Bondi during a fiery Feb. 11 hearing, Bondi refused to answer questions about Trump’s involvement with Epstein or acknowledge Epstein’s victims and often retorted by criticizing the lawmakers questioning her.
Attorney General Pam Bondi appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 7, 2025. (AP)
Bondi oversaw investigations into Trump’s political opponents
During her January 2025 confirmation hearing, Bondi said she would not prosecute Trump’s political opponents, something Trump had vowed to do if he won his 2024 election. Bondi said that’s what Biden’s Justice Department did.
“No one will be prosecuted, investigated because they are a political opponent,” Bondi said during the hearing. “That’s what we’ve seen for the last four years in this administration.”
We rated similar Trump claims about former President Joe Biden False. Trump was charged twice in federal court and separately in Manhattan and Fulton County, Georgia. We found no evidence Biden ordered the prosecutions.
During her tenure, however, Bondi opened investigations into several people Trump has described as his political opponents, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan.
Some investigations started after Trump posted to Truth Social in September 2025 pushing prosecutions.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Trump wrote.
Democratic senators asked Bondi about these investigations in an Oct. 7, 2025, hearing, to which she responded, “I’ll keep fighting to ensure that law enforcement and the judicial process move forward without political interference.”
Federal judges have blocked some Trump-Bondi era investigations.
Bondi misleads on timeline of Minnesota fraud investigations
In December, Bondi said the Justice Department had been investigating fraud in Minnesota “for months. So far, we have charged 98 individuals.”
We rated Bondi’s statement Half True, because Bondi omitted context that the bulk of charges happened before the Trump administration.
Law enforcement and prosecutors in Minnesota started investigating major fraud perpetrated by Minnesota nonprofit, Feeding Our Future, in 2021. By mid-January 2025, before Trump took office, prosecutors had charged 70 people in the Feeding Our Future case in addition to five for a related juror bribery scheme.
Trump administration prosecutors have continued the investigation. Late in 2025, the number of Feeding Our Future defendants grew to 78, and prosecutors charged 15 in other related schemes.
Attorney General Pam Bondi holds vials containing a genuine oxycodone pill and a counterfeit one at a Drug Enforcement Administration research laboratory, April 29, 2025, in Northern Virginia. (AP)
Bondi’s exaggerates impact of fentanyl seizures
As Trump neared the 100-day mark of his second term, Bondi said fentanyl seizures had saved “119 million” to “258 million” lives.
Pants on Fire!
The Drug Enforcement Agency said it had seized 119 million deadly fentanyl doses, but crediting that statistic to saving up to 75% of the U.S. population made no mathematical sense.
Bondi’s calculation rested on the assumption that 2 milligrams of fentanyl is lethal. However, lethality varies based on a person’s height, weight and tolerance to the drug. It also assumes that all fentanyl seized is pure fentanyl, which is generally not the case.
Additionally, the number of people who die from opioid overdoses each year is in the tens of thousands. Drug experts say 119 million people in the U.S. do not consume fentanyl or illicit drugs that may be laced with fentanyl; people who do not consume illicit drugs are not at risk of dying of an overdose.
RELATED: See Bondi’s Truth-O-Meter scorecard, from 2010 to now
