President Donald Trump fired U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, April 2, ending her 14-month tenure leading the Department of Justice. Trump announced her departure on social media, calling her a “Great American Patriot” and saying she would be transitioning to a job in the private sector.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer to Trump, was named acting attorney general while a permanent replacement is considered.
Bondi on April 2 posted on social media that she will help in the office’s transition “before moving to an important private sector role I am thrilled about,” where she will “continue fighting” for the president.
Controversial tenure
Bondi’s time as attorney general drew criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. Lawmakers faulted her for the Justice Department’s handling of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and for pursuing high-profile investigations that did not result in major convictions. Advisers to the president reportedly grew frustrated with what they saw as slow progress on cases involving Trump’s critics.
Potential replacements with New York ties
Several names have surfaced as possible successors to Bondi. Here are some with New York ties.
Lee Zeldin
Zeldin, the current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, served 22 years in the military, including a 2006 deployment to Iraq. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve in May 2025.
Born and raised on Long Island, the Republican represented New York’s 1st Congressional District from 2015 to 2023 and served in the New York State Senate from 2011 to 2014. Zeldin unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2022, losing against Gov. Kathy Hochul. The Suffolk County resident, who became the youngest attorney in New York at the time at age 23, also attended SUNY Albany and Albany Law School.
Jeanine Ferris Pirro
Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has more than three decades of law enforcement experience. She was the first woman elected to the Westchester County Court in 1991, served three terms as Westchester County district attorney between 1994 and 2005, and was the first female president of the New York State District Attorneys Association. Pirro also ran for New York Attorney General in 2005 but lost to former governor Andrew Cuomo.
Pirro established the nation’s first domestic violence unit in a prosecutor’s office and is the author of eight books. She presided over the television court show ‘Judge Jeanine Pirro’ from 2008 to 2011 on the CW network and hosted two other programs on Fox News.
While a co-host for Fox News, Pirro was named as a defendant along with other network anchors and commentators in a 2021 defamation suit by Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems for “broadcasting false information about the company’s voting machines” during the 2020 election. Pirro later testified in court that she believed the election to be “fair and free.” The case was settled for $787.5 million.
Todd Blanche
The former deputy attorney general – now acting U.S. attorney general – Blanche is a former federal prosecutor who served as the lead lawyer for the team representing former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort in a New York fraud case, in which he was accused of defrauding banks of more than $1 million by submitting false financial statements when applying for residential mortgage loans.
Blanche has worked at several prominent law firms, including WilmerHale and Cadwalader and Wickersham & Taft. He spent more than eight years at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he served as co-chief of the White Plains division. Originally from Denver, he attended Brooklyn Law School at night while working as a paralegal at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and graduated cum laude.
Contributing: USA Today network, Reuters
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Who could replace Bondi? 3 names with NY ties floated as replacements
Reporting by Alexandra Rivera and Victoria E. Freile, New York Connect Team / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
