A number of former Justice Department officials serving under Republican administrations are privately “troubled to appalled” with what they described as Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “ferociously sycophantic” tenure leading the DOJ, The New Yorker reported Monday.
“Bondi’s performance has produced almost universal outrage from Democrats and, in private at least, the unhappiness crosses party lines,” wrote The New Yorker reporter Ruth Marcus, who left The Washington Post earlier this year over the publication’s alleged capitulation to its owner, Jeff Bezos.
Speaking with officials who served at senior levels in the Justice Department under every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan’s, some of whom “support much of (President Donald) Trump’s agenda,” Marcus wrote that the officials “shared criticism of Bondi that ranged from troubled to appalled,” and singled out her “ferociously sycophantic” rhetoric about Trump.
That supposed “sycophantic” behavior, Marcus wrote, appears to have paid off, with Trump sticking by Bondi amid intense scrutiny from many MAGA faithful over her botched handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Bondi even survived a campaign from far-right influencer Laura Loomer to have her ousted, despite Loomer’s “breathtaking influence” on the White House and successful history of getting dozens of government employees to step down or be fired.
“If Trump is sticking with Bondi, it may be because, as one prominent conservative lawyer and Justice Department veteran told me, ‘in Pam Bondi, Donald Trump has the attorney general he always wanted,’” Marcus wrote. “Trump’s previous selections for the post were among his greatest regrets of his first term.”
On Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges and is alleged to have maintained a ‘client list’ of powerful figures for blackmail purposes, Bondi has been the frequent target of critics of the Trump administration’s handling of the matter, even among Trump’s most loyal supporters.
Bondi told Fox News in February that the supposed ‘client list’ was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” but just months later, a DOJ memo leaked that proclaimed Epstein never maintained a client list to begin with, and that no further information would be released on the disgraced financier.
Despite the MAGA uproar, both Trump and the White House stood by Bondi’s side, and cast blame on the blowback elsewhere.
“A senior Administration official told me that Bondi’s mistakes on Epstein reflected a broader failure among members of the Administration to appreciate the hold that the issue has on the MAGA world,” Marcus wrote. “Many did not recognize ‘the almost cult around the subject matter,’ the official said, and so ‘she may have treated it a little more cavalierly than if she had it to do over now.’”