What Pam Bondi Destroyed in One Year Could Take Decades to Rebuild
The Justice Department has degraded more under her leadership than ever before.
Pam Bondi’s sledgehammer approach to the Justice Department and its employees. The independence, integrity, and workforce at DOJ have degraded more under her leadership than ever before in the department’s 155-year history.
On her first day as attorney general, Bondi issued a “zealous advocacy“ memo that declared Justice Department attorneys are the president’s lawyers. The memo threatened that any attorney who refused to advance the administration’s “good-faith arguments” because of personal political views would face discipline or potential termination. She made good on that promise, firing almost 270 career employees (by Justice Connection’s count), usually without cause and apparently in violation of civil service laws.
Since Watergate, every attorney general had promoted policies that protected the department’s criminal and civil law enforcement decisions from partisan influences - whether real or perceived, direct or indirect.
Bondi broke that tradition.
She made no secret that her orders come from her former client: the president himself. In March 2025, she welcomed President Trump to an event in the Justice Department’s Great Hall, calling him the “greatest president in the history of our country and saying that she works at the directive of Donald Trump.”
Her tenure was driven by politics and advocacy, often memorialized in executive orders that run afoul of the law or Constitution. Under Bondi, the Justice Department’s prosecutorial powers were overtly used to protect the president’s allies and punish his perceived enemies.
Because of this, the department’s career workforce was asked to carry out orders that were illegal, unconstitutional, or unethical. They were faced with a choice that would have been unimaginable in previous administrations: resign or be fired.
That led to a mass exodus of talent at the Justice Department.
Since the start of this administration, nearly 16,000 employees have left, including approximately 25 percent of the department’s attorneys. A disproportionately high percentage of those pushed out – often involuntarily – were in senior roles, destabilizing the offices they left behind and leaving our country less safe.
Those who remain often work in components that are severely understaffed and can’t manage the caseload. One manager in the Civil Division informed a court in a pending case that her section had lost over 40% of its attorneys. She openly admitted she couldn’t devote her full attention to the case and listed nine other pending cases that require her immediate attention, in addition to her extensive managerial duties. This is just one of countless examples of offices that have been stretched too thin by Bondi’s recklessness.
It gets worse.
Because of Bondi’s willingness to ignore court orders, misrepresent facts, and make arguments with no basis in the law, Justice Department lawyers have lost their “presumption of regularity“ with the courts. Judges no longer believe the department is necessarily operating in good faith and telling the truth. This loss of credibility extends to the public as well, with grand juries across the country increasingly refusing to indict cases brought by the Justice Department.
DOJ jobs have also become far less desirable, and the department is struggling to attract qualified applicants to fill vacancies – especially at the FBI, the department’s litigating divisions, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices throughout the country.
And DOJ’s mission-critical work is suffering because agents and attorneys have been reassigned to immigration matters or reviewing the Epstein files, pulling them from duties such as tackling national security threats, fraud, and crimes against children. The data shows that vital work isn’t being done. Since Bondi’s confirmation, DOJ has been shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace, quietly closing more than 23,000 in the first six months alone.
What Bondi destroyed in a year could take decades to rebuild. But the president didn’t fire her as part of a much-needed course-correction; he axed her because she didn’t go far enough.
For now, we have an acting attorney general who has never stopped seeing himself as Trump’s personal lawyer. Todd Blanche has used his high position at the department to illegally fire career employees, smear whistleblowers, and attack the judiciary. Time and again he has shown that his guiding star is fealty to the president, not upholding the rule of law.
Unfortunately, Bondi’s departure is likely not a sign of better things to come at the Justice Department. Though a nominee has yet to be named, we already know replacing her with a more competent attorney general who — like her — believes his sole client is the president and not the country may just make things worse.
We need the Senate to exercise its constitutional check to ensure that doesn’t happen. Until we have a Senate willing to meet the moment, we will continue to have sycophants in charge who see fealty to one man as their highest priority.
Many of us who once worked at the Justice Department can’t simply wait out this administration. We can’t stand by and do nothing. That’s why Justice Connection has mobilized DOJ alumni across the country to provide the support our former colleagues need and stand up for the rule of law. We’ll also mobilize them to actively oppose any nominee who won’t commit to restoring DOJ’s integrity and independence. We strive for a Justice Department that lives up to the ideal in its name.
Our safety, prosperity, and rights depend on an institution that is under attack. We once fought for these ideals within the Justice Department. Now, the best way we can fight for the department is from the outside.
Now is the time to speak up for Justice. We encourage all Americans to join us — before it’s too late.
Stacey Young is executive director and founder of Justice Connection.
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