Trump Administration Live Updates: Bondi Fired as Attorney General
"Here’s What We’re Covering Today
Bondi Fired: President Trump has been souring on Attorney General Pam Bondi for months, especially because of her handling of the Epstein files, which has become a political liability for Mr. Trump. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer to Mr. Trump, will be the acting attorney general, the president wrote on social media. Mr. Trump said Ms. Bondi would be taking a job in the private sector. Read more ›
President Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, removing the nation’s top law enforcement officer after privately venting his frustrations for months over her handling of the Epstein files and her failed efforts to prosecute his political enemies.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump said he was replacing Ms. Bondi with Todd Blanche, her deputy, on an interim basis.
The House Oversight Committee was scheduled to depose Pam Bondi on April 14 over the Justice Department’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and its handling of investigative material in the case. But Bondi had not yet committed to appearing, according to people familiar with the discussions between her and the committee.
Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the panel, said in a statement that Bondi was still “legally obligated to appear before our committee under oath,” and Representative Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican who moved to subpoena for Bondi, said that “my subpoena still stands.”
A spokeswoman said the committee’s Republican chairman, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, would discuss next steps with the Justice Department and committee members before deciding how to proceed.
Stacey Young, the founder of Justice Connection, a group of former Justice Department employees, said Pam Bondi had taken a “sledgehammer” to the department and its workforce, causing damage that could take decades to rebuild. But she said she believed President Trump had dismissed Bondi only because “she didn’t go far enough.”
Young called on Congress to demand an apolitical replacement. “Replacing her with a more competent attorney general who — like her — believes their sole client is the president and not the country may just make things worse,” she said.
Todd Blanche, the new acting attorney general, said in a statement that Pam Bondi “led this Department with strength and conviction” and thanked Trump for promoting him.
“We will continue backing the blue, enforcing the law, and doing everything in our power to keep America safe,” Blanche wrote on social media.”
Representative Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican who pushed for the Oversight Committee to subpoena Pam Bondi and had been one of her more outspoken G.O.P. critics, said in a statement that she looked forward to Bondi’s replacement.
“Bondi handled the Epstein Files in a terrible manner and made this situation far worse than it had to be for President Trump,” Mace said.
President Trump formally announced on Truth Social that he was firing Attorney General Pam Bondi and replacing her on an interim basis with Todd Blanche, her deputy.
“We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future,” he wrote on social media.
The National Capital Planning Commission, which is led by allies of President Trump, approved the president’s $400 million White House ballroom project despite a deluge of negative comments from the public. But legal roadblocks remain after a federal judge ruled that Mr. Trump must get approval from Congress to proceed.
The planning board’s approval came just days after Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court in Washington, a George W. Bush appointee, ordered the project halted.
The Senate moved early Thursday to try again to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, but House Republicans declined to clear the Senate plan for President Trump, prolonging the record agency shutdown even after G.O.P. leaders had agreed on a way to end it swiftly.
Meeting in a brief ceremonial session, the House opted not to take up spending legislation that the Senate had sent over about 90 minutes earlier, leaving a quick resolution to the stalemate out of reach for now. It was unclear whether the House, which is in a two-week recess, might consider the bill before its scheduled return in mid-April, or whether it would keep the department shuttered as Republicans work through a bitter intraparty divide over the bill.
House Republicans had a raucous conference call this afternoon with Speaker Mike Johnson in which far-right lawmakers vented about his plan to take up the Senate bill to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, according to a Republican lawmaker who was on the call.
The House, which is currently in the middle of a two-week recess, is not planning to return next week to consider that bill, the lawmaker said. That means the shutdown, for now, is expected to continue until at least the week of April 13, when the House is scheduled to return to Washington and could potentially vote on the measure.
In a post on social media, President Trump appeared to celebrate Congress’s progress in reaching a deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, while also criticizing Democrats for not funding the department’s immigration agencies.
Trump then said he will “soon sign an order to pay ALL of the incredible employees at the Department of Homeland Security,” although it was unclear whether that meant Trump would go around Congress to fund each and every component of the department or just the immigration enforcement agencies.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, criticized House Republicans for not quickly taking up and passing the Senate’s bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
With the House in recess until April 14, any one lawmaker can block efforts to pass the bill unanimously during brief procedural sessions being held this week and next. Some hard-line Republicans have bashed the plan and suggested they would block it.
“House Republicans own the longest government shutdown in history,” Schumer said in a statement.
The Senate’s bill to fund the Homeland Security Department is now formally back with the House. The shutdown of the department will continue at least through Monday, when the House will hold its next pro forma session.
The House just convened for a two-minute pro forma session in a mostly empty chamber. No action was taken on the Senate’s bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
A coalition of legal groups on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, saying the agency had allowed federal immigration agents to routinely enter homes to carry out searches and arrests in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia, contends that the Homeland Security Department and its subsidiary, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, broke with their longstanding practices last year in adopting an undisclosed policy that allowed agents to force their way into homes without judicial warrants. The suit asks that a federal judge invalidate the policy entirely.
Democrats have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over President Trump’s executive order seeking to build a national list of citizens that would determine voting eligibility and restrict mail ballots. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, argues that the Constitution gives Congress the power over elections, and that Trump’s order goes beyond his presidential authority. A coalition of voting rights groups followed with its own lawsuit against the order on Thursday.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, accused Trump in a statement of trying to “undo a fair election with this outlandish executive order.”
Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the House minority leader, are plaintiffs on the Democrats’ lawsuit, along with the Democratic National Committee and organizations representing Democratic governors, senators and representatives."
No comments:
Post a Comment