US President Donald Trump has fired Attorney-General Pam Bondi and named his former personal lawyer to serve as the acting chief of the Justice Department.

The move, which Trump announced in a social media post, comes amid criticism of Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files and her failure to successfully prosecute several perceived Trump foes.

“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said. “Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country.”

Bondi “will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector”, the President said, and will be replaced on an interim basis by Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche.

Bondi has drawn fire from some Trump supporters for her handling of the release of the Justice Department files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.

The Epstein affair has been a major political liability for Trump, who was a longtime friend of the disgraced financier.

Bondi has also fallen short with efforts to successfully prosecute perceived Trump opponents such as former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney-General Letitia James.

According to The New York Times, Trump may name Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, to be the next Attorney-General.

In the meantime, the post will be filled by Blanche, who was one of the personal lawyers who defended Trump in the multiple criminal cases he faced after he left the presidency in 2021.

Bondi’s ousting comes nearly a month after Trump fired Kristi Noem as the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Good riddance

Democratic lawmakers welcomed Bondi’s firing.

“Good riddance,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice became a cesspool of corruption.

“Bondi will be remembered for blocking the release of the Epstein files [and] weaponising the DOJ to go after Trump’s political opponents.”

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said Bondi’s “botched handling of the Epstein files” had “denied victims transparency and further undermined trust in our justice system”.

”Americans deserve a Justice Department that is actually focused on delivering justice, not on serving a president’s agenda of personal and political self-interest," Warner said.

Bondi joined Trump’s legal team during his first-term impeachment trial, in which he was alleged to have pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to find political dirt on Joe Biden.

Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives but acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate.

Bondi helped push Trump’s false claims of voter fraud after he lost the 2020 election to Biden.

She made television appearances on behalf of Trump and pushed to delegitimise vote counting in battleground states as part of the push by the former president to overturn the results of the vote.

Bondi also criticised the criminal cases brought against Trump, appearing in solidarity at his New York trial, where he was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star.

Bondi served as a prosecutor for 18 years before being elected Florida’s attorney general in 2010, the first woman to hold the post. She was re-elected to a second term in 2014.

– Agence France-Presse