Bondi struggled to prosecute Trump foes. But will a new attorney general make a difference?

Attorney General Pam Bondi, left, listens as President Donald Trump, right, speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, July 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) 2026-04-03T15:54:23Z WASHINGTON (AP) — Pam Bondi is out of her job after failing to deliver criminal cases against President Donald Trump’s political enemies.

But there’s no guarantee her successor will have any better success at placating the president.

Over the last year, Bondi’s Justice Department has encountered resistance from judges, grand jurors and its own workforce in trying to establish criminal conduct by one Trump foe after another.

A new attorney general will confront not only Trump’s demand for political prosecutions — a constant dating back to his first term in the White House — but also the same skeptical court system, and factual and legal hurdles, that have impeded efforts to deliver the sought-after results. “At the end of the day, it’s not like there were some magic steps that Pam Bondi could have taken to make bad cases look good to grand juries or judges,” Peter Keisler, a former acting attorney general in President George W.

Bush’s administration, said in an email. “The problem is that the president is demanding that prosecutions be brought when there’s no evidence and no valid legal theory.

A new Attorney General won’t change that.” Bondi was just the latest Trump attorney general pressed to meet the president’s demands of loyalty and desire for retribution.

Trump in his first term called for Jeff Sessions to investigate Democrat Hillary Clinton and ultimately pushed him out over his recusal from the Russia election interference investigation.

He berated another attorney general, William Barr, over Barr’s refusal to back his false claims of election fraud in the 2020 contest.

Barr resigned soon after.

Bondi arrived at the Justice Department 14 months ago seemingly determined to remain in Trump’s good graces unlike her predecessors had, heaping praise on him, offering unflinching support and embarking on investigations into Democrats and the president’s adversaries — even amid concerns from career prosecutors about the sufficiency of evidence.

Read More Days after Trump implored Bondi via social media last September to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Justice Department did just that, securing indictments in Virginia.

But the win was short-lived: a judge weeks later dismissed the case

原文链接: AP News