President Donald Trump has informed Attorney General Pam Bondi in recent days that she will soon be removed from her position, according to one White House official and another person familiar with the situation. The official said Trump still personally likes Bondi and notified her before the official removal to “help her along.”

Many people in Trump’s closest orbit have been advocating for her removal for months, according to the official, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on sensitive matters. The decision has not been formally announced nor solidified and is subject to change, but four sources familiar say her departure is imminent.

Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is on the shortlist to replace Bondi, three sources familiar with the matter told MS NOW.

Trump has been frustrated with Bondi’s inability to successfully prosecute several individuals whom he considers political enemies and has argued should face criminal charges.

It’s unclear which people Trump is upset have not been prosecuted by Bondi’s Justice Department. But grand juries have rejected some of the efforts to charge Trump critics, including Letitia James and Democratic lawmakers, and judges have blocked other attempts by the administration to build legal cases as lacking evidence.  

The attorney general has been under constant fire for her handling of the release of investigative files related to convicted and deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The House Oversight Committee recently subpoenaed her to testify about her department’s handling of the files’ release. She refused to answer questions about that handling during a feisty House Judiciary Committee hearing in February.

In response to a request for comment, the DOJ referred MS NOW to the White House.  

A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in a statement to The New York Times, which first reported the news on Wednesday, Trump said, “Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job.”

If Trump moves ahead with the decision to oust Bondi, she would be the second Cabinet member to leave during Trump’s current tenure in the White House. Kristi Noem was ousted as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in early March after an uproar over the department’s mass deportation policies and her own controversial testimony before Congress.

Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, has bent the DOJ to the will of the White House unlike any attorney general in modern history. She has fired civil servants at Trump’s directive, investigated the president’s perceived enemies and curbed enforcement disfavored by Trump allies. 

But that has not shielded Bondi from blowback over her handling of the Epstein matter. After initially promising to release an Epstein “client list,” stoking long-simmering conspiracy theories about the case, she released a statement that poured cold water on those theories, acknowledging that no such client list existed.

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From MS Now.