President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, announcing that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will become Acting Attorney General. Bondi’s dismissal ends a short tenure that will be mostly remembered for making no one happy.

The immediate cause of Bondi’s dismissal appears to have been Trump’s belief that she had briefed Rep. Eric Swalwell ahead of the FBI’s release of documents related to his past affair with Chinese intelligence officer Christine “Fang” Fang (though some reports deny this). But the broader cause of this firing is Bondi’s failure to deliver on Trump’s desire for lawfare retribution against his political opponents.

Trump has always regarded his executive office as a lever to advance his own interests. But following failed or aborted prosecutions of prominent Democrats or anti-Trump figures such as Sen. Adam Schiff, former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump appears to have decided Bondi had to go. Bondi also did herself no favors by her perceived mishandling of the Epstein files, suggesting as she did that a “client list” existed and helping fuel political momentum for the files to be released.

Whoever Trump nominates to replace Bondi will face tough questions from the Senate on whether they will adopt a more conciliatory approach to Trump’s political vendettas. And while Acting Attorney General Blanche may provide a new voice to cool Trump’s anger in this regard, he is unlikely to bring a substantive change from Bondi.

While Blanche has a closer personal relationship with the president, he is not a zealot à la former associate deputy attorney general Emil Bove. Moreover, the central issue plaguing Trump’s desire for lawfare is not that Bondi didn’t work hard enough on this issue, but rather that the law did not facilitate that harder work. The reason cases have not been brought to charge or otherwise thrown out of court is that the facts did not support prosecution in the first place.

Yet, even as Trump world washes its hands of Bondi, she is unlikely to receive a more sympathetic hearing from Democrats and the media. After all, Bondi’s firings of career prosecutors and ending of high-profile corruption investigations into various pro-Trump officials or aligned politicians has raised significant concerns over politicization of the Justice Department. Those let off the hook included DHS tsar Tom Homan, Carolina Amesty, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and Rep. Henry Cuellar. Bondi also weakened investigations into foreign lobbying and white collar and fraud crimes.

Again, however, it is unclear what Trump can credibly expect to change under a new Attorney General. Even if that nominee is confirmed by the Senate and adopts a more aggressive stance against Trump’s political enemies, they won’t ultimately be able to sate Trump’s appetite for revenge.

In the US, it remains the province of the courts and ultimately the Supreme Court to say what the law is. And as with its recent strike-down of Trump’s tariffs, the Supreme Court has shown itself independent of Trump’s whims.

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Tom Rogan is a national security writer at the Washington Examiner

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