‘How high does Trump want them to jump?’: Why Pam Bondi’s loyalty to the President was not enough

[0:00] The ouster of now former Attorney General Pam Bondi could signal trouble for other top [0:05] officials in the Trump administration. The Atlantic reports that there are active discussions [0:09] about additional departures, including FBI Director Kash Patel, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, [0:15] and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez de Remmer. That's according to several people familiar [0:20] with the plans. But the White House has brushed off those claims. For now, Deputy Attorney General [0:25] Todd Blanch has been elevated to Acting Attorney General. And within hours of Bondi's firing, [0:31] images began circulating of her framed portrait unceremoniously removed from its place of honor [0:36] on the walls of the Justice Department offices. MS now obtained the photo of the portrait in a [0:42] trash bin. Sources say Bondi's failure to successfully prosecute Trump's perceived [0:48] political adversaries, plus her handling of the Epstein files fall out, are part of the reason [0:54] for her firing. [0:56] Despite being one of Trump's most loyal foot soldiers. A loyalty that was on display during [1:01] Bondi's heated testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in February. [1:08] Have you apologized to President Trump? All of you who participated in those impeachment [1:13] hearings against Donald Trump, you all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack [1:18] the president and I am not going to have it. I'm not going to put up with it. [1:22] He is the most transparent president in the nation's history. [1:28] I don't know why you're laughing. You're a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin. [1:35] I'm sorry. [1:37] Not the Dow. Joining us now, Paul Butler, MS now legal analyst, former federal prosecutor and [1:43] professor at Georgetown School of Law, and Tolu Olarunipa, staff writer at The Atlantic. [1:49] Hey guys, thanks for being here this morning. Tolu, I want to start with some of the reporting [1:53] that you all have. I, from what I'm hearing, it seems like you're going to have a lot of [2:00] problems. It seems like this job is sort of Todd Blanche's to lose at this point, that [2:04] him being elevated to acting attorney general is kind of a trial run. When you're looking [2:10] at sort of the buffet, as Eugene likes to say, from Michelle Norris, of potential options [2:17] here, people whose names have been mentioned that Trump is considering, who are also just [2:22] floating their own names maybe in an attempt to burnish their own reputation. But Jeanine [2:27] Pirro, Lee Zeldin, Eric Schmidt, what do you think? [2:30] What do you think that Todd Blanche needs to do in order to solidify his job security? [2:35] Well, this is a tough job for any person in the Trump administration. We saw what happened [2:39] to Jeff Sessions. We saw what happened to Bill Barr. It's hard to please a president [2:42] who wants his attorney general to be his personal lawyer, going after his enemies and using [2:47] the full force of the Justice Department to prosecute his enemies, protect himself and [2:51] protect his friends without really thinking about the Constitution or the rule of law [2:54] or any of the things that typical attorney generals focus on. [2:58] Well, you put it like that. [3:00] That's what the president wants. We've seen him over the last nine years talk about publicly [3:05] what he wants from his attorney general. But he is going to go about this apprentice style. [3:09] He has someone in there now with Todd Blanche, who he wants to prove that he can do what [3:13] the president wants, prove that he can lock up the president's opponents, people like [3:16] James Comey, people like Letitia James, people who Pambani was not able to get in front of [3:22] a courtroom and get behind bars. We'll see if Todd Blanche goes a little bit more in trying [3:27] to do that, even though, you know, there's not very much evidence that they need to be [3:30] sued for the things that they are accused of. [3:32] But this is a trial run. This is an apprentice style, you know, audition for Todd Blanche [3:37] to get the job. And the task that he's being asked to perform, if he can do it over the [3:42] next weeks and months, is to protect the president, protect his friends and lock up his opponents. [3:48] And that is something that very difficult for any attorney general to do, but something [3:52] the president wants very, very candidly. [3:54] JOHN YANG, The — all of those people who could be the attorney general, I still believe [4:00] that it doesn't matter. [4:01] Because, at the end of the day, Donald Trump seems to be running the DOJ. What he wants [4:07] gets done. [4:08] But I do want to look at a little bit of info on Todd Blanche, current acting attorney general. [4:12] He was Trump's personal attorney in the hush money criminal conviction, federal election [4:16] interference case, classified docs case. He's a deputy attorney general under Bondi. [4:20] On February 2025, during confirmation hearings, when asked if he's still Trump's lawyer, [4:27] he said, I mean, yes, my attorney-client relationship with President Trump remains. Hold on to that. [4:31] I want to get to that. [4:32] July 24th to 25th of last year, he went down and interviewed Glenn Maxwell. [4:39] September of last year, defended his decision to interview her, arguing that whether or [4:43] not she was a credible witness was an impossible question. [4:47] December 2025, he announced that the DOJ would release hundreds of thousands of Epstein files, [4:51] and then it released only a small fraction of that amount. [4:53] And the department made more files public at the end of January, as we remember. [4:57] This is not a man. [4:58] It seems that, in other words, this is not a man. [4:59] It seems that, in other words, this is not a man. [5:00] It seems that, in other words, this is not a man. [5:01] I mean, yes, women in other presidencies might get the job. [5:05] But I really want to get back to this. [5:06] I mean, yes, my attorney-client relationship with the president—with President Trump [5:11] remains. [5:12] If he is the attorney general, acting attorney general, if he goes back and becomes the actual [5:18] attorney general of the United States, can that still be true, that his attorney-client [5:23] relationship with President Trump remains? [5:25] Now, does it remain for everything that they talk about, or does it just remain for the [5:28] cases that they tried? [5:29] JOHN YANG, CNN CORRESPONDENT, It does unless the president would agree to [5:32] waive it, which he should, since it presents an obvious conflict of interest. But he won't. Trump [5:38] wouldn't do that. And as a practical matter, the consequences would be for Blanche and his [5:44] law license, which is a reason why I don't know why any attorney with integrity would take this [5:51] job, because if you work for Donald Trump, you are going to get in trouble with the bar. [5:57] To your point, if we look at the attorneys general, he's chosen, each one has been more [6:03] compliant and more subservient. So he was mad at Sessions because of the Russian investigation. [6:13] And so he selected Barr. Barr said that the Russian investigation was a witch hunt, but [6:19] the big lie was too far a bridge for Barr. And so Bondi, during her confirmation hearings, [6:26] said that she, [6:27] she couldn't say whether Trump had lost the 2020 election. And in fact, she sicked the FBI [6:34] to go and get the voting machines from Georgia. So she's re-litigating something that is about [6:42] the big lie, something that's clear. So again, if that wasn't high enough for an attorney general [6:49] to jump for Trump, then what's he looking for now? I mean, how high does he want someone to jump? [6:55] It's not crazy for, [6:57] you know, clients to ask attorneys to do things that the attorneys can't do. That's why attorneys [7:04] are called counselors. But you have to listen. And when your client doesn't listen, you know what you [7:09] do? You quit. Yeah, yeah. In a normal world. So the New York Times reported the headline, [7:19] Bondi wanting a graceful exit. She wanted a graceful exit. I'm going to read this from the [7:25] story. [7:29] So this sort of encapsulates the issues for the next, [7:59] you know, [7:59] attorney general, whoever that person might be, Todd Blanche. So one of the things, that's my [8:05] prediction. One of the things in, I can't remember which organization pointed this out. [8:11] The president was really upset that she could not bring any, get one, bring any prosecutions or get [8:19] any convictions of his political enemies. Whoever the next attorney general is still going to have [8:25] that as a top priority of the president. We talk about the big ones, Letitia. [8:29] James, James Comey, our pal, the former CIA director, John Brennan. Those might be tough, [8:39] but I'm wondering, you mentioned Georgia and Fulton County. Is there anything stopping [8:45] the Department of Justice and the future attorney general from going after Fonny Willis? [8:52] No. And not only Fonny Willis, Alvin Bragg, who made Donald Trump a convicted fellow. [9:00] He's been 34 times over. Jack Smith needs to be nervous, not because there's evidence that any of [9:06] those people have committed a crime, but that wouldn't be a bar to an unethical prosecutor [9:13] going after them. At minimum, you make them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on [9:18] attorney's fees. The process is the punishment. Exactly.