Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche plans to move into Pam Bondi’s old office in the coming days, according to a new report.
President Donald Trump fired Bondi last week and announced that her deputy, Blanche, would become the acting attorney general. Now, he’s planning on moving into her old fifth-floor office at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., on Monday, CNN reports, citing a memo Blanche sent to employees at the deputy attorney general’s office.
In a separate memo to staff reviewed by CNN, Blanche thanked Bondi “for her friendship, service, and selfless dedication to our department and country.” He also said the Department of Justice’s mission “remains the same today as it was yesterday.”
“President Trump has promised a safe America and will continue to deliver on that promise,” he added.
Trump announced Bondi’s departure in a Truth Social post on April 2, and said she’d be “transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector.” At the same time, he announced that Blanche, his former personal criminal defense attorney, would be stepping in to serve as the acting attorney general.
The president fired Bondi after privately expressing frustrations about her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and her failed attempts to prosecute his perceived political foes,The New York Times reported last week. The announcement came about a month after Trump fired Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary.
It was also announced Wednesday that Bondi will not attend a previously scheduled House Oversight Committee deposition related to the Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Blanche told reporters it’d be “an honor” to be nominated to permanently replace Bondi.
“If President Trump chooses to keep me as acting, that's an honor. If he chooses to nominate me, that's an honor,” he told reporters.
“If he chooses to nominate somebody else and I go back to being the [deputy attorney general], that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much, I love you, sir,’” he continued.
Earlier in the press conference, Blanche claimed that “nobody has any idea why the attorney general is no longer the attorney general ... except for President Trump.” When asked to elaborate, he said, “I don’t operate every day trying to second-guess what President Trump or anybody else is thinking.”
He later added: “I grow tired of people in the media saying why President Trump did or did not do something, because President Trump’s the only one that knows that.”
