Pam Bondi’s exit from the Department of Justice has reportedly kicked off a race among Donald Trump-aligned figures vying to be the next attorney general, a key role in the president’s attempts to target his political enemies and defend a sweeping agenda facing a mountain of legal challenges.
The president has repeatedly praised his Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Bondi’s now-former top deputy and the president’s former criminal defense attorney, suggesting that the race may be his to lose.
But MAGA figures are cheerleading Harmeet Dhillon, who is currently leading the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News personality and current top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.
Trump’s allies have also floated the idea of nominating Pirro’s predecessor Ed Martin, a former “Stop the Steal” lawyer now serving as the U.S. pardon attorney.
None of the potential candidates for the top job have publicly declared their interest for the role, but The Washington Post reports that they are making moves in- and outside the agency to get the president’s attention while influential figures within Trump’s orbit are seizing on his shakeup to pitch their own names.
Bondi’s ousting followed months of Trump-led pressure on the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents after he publicly demanded their imprisonment. Cases against former FBI director James Comey and the New York Attorney General Letitia James fell apart in court, and several Trump-appointed prosecutors — including at least one who was installed with the explicit purpose of taking on the president’s enemies — were effectively disqualified from office.
But within the three weeks since Blanche stepped in, “he has taken screws that seemed fully turned and tightened them another notch,” according to former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman.
“His initial moves suggest that, hard as it is to conceive, he will be even more vicious, more slavish toward Trump, and more willing to jettison the public interest and the rule of law than was his consummately servile predecessor,” he wrote.
Blanche, who ran day-to-day operations at the Justice Department under Bondi, moved quickly to make the job his own after her departure. He pushed out her top spokespeople and installed key allies in top roles — including principal associate deputy attorney general Trent McCotter, a former attorney for Steve Bannon, and Colin McDonald, who is heading up a new fraud division that opened under Blanche.
Blanche, as acting attorney general, has also released a first report from the Trump-era Weaponization Working Group, alleging former President Joe Biden targeted anti-abortion protesters.
He has also publicly stated that the Justice Department is done with Jeffrey Epstein, after the agency’s dragged-out release of millions of documents tied to the well-connected sex offender turned into a major political liability under Bondi’s leadership.
“I think that to the extent that the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche declared on Fox News on April 2.
Days later, he suggested he would welcome the opportunity to make his new job permanent.
“If he chooses to nominate somebody else and I go back to being the [deputy attorney general], that’s an honor,” he told reporters. “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.’”
Dhillon, meanwhile, has mounted an aggressive effort to investigate the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in an apparent attempt to legitimize the president’s ongoing narrative that the results were rigged and stolen from him.
As chief of the Justice Department’s storied civil rights division, Dhillon has recast the agency’s mission into one that leans into the president’s grievances and shifts its focus away from critical missions such as police oversight, voting rights protections and combating racial discrimination.
The former Republican Party official and Trump campaign adviser has instead pursued cases against transgender athletes, allegations of anti-Christian bias, and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Right-wing influencers championed Dhillon as their pick for the next AG on social media shortly after Bondi’s exit.
Pirro maintains an unusually close relationship with the president for a federal prosecutor. She frequently appears at the White House, and she often speaks with Trump by phone, according to The Washington Post.
Her office has repeatedly failed to secure indictments and convictions in politically charged cases, and a federal judge last month blasted Pirro’s attempts to subpoena the Federal Reserve as part of an investigation into Chair Jermone Powell, who Trump has repeatedly threatened with firing.
Yet prosecutors from her office still showed up unannounced at the central bank last week.
She has also downplayed any talk of her getting a promotion.
“I’m doing what I love, and that’s why I left a very nice life,” she told reporters at a recent news conference, referring to her time with Fox News. “That’s what the president has asked me to do, and that’s what I’m doing.”
Other outliers — including the Justice Department’s No. 3 official Stanley Woodward and Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin — have also been considered as potential contenders, according to Politico.
But unlike other figures touted by right-wing influencers, Woodward and Zeldin have not cultivated volatile personalities online and on the airwaves.
Still, anyone who wants the job will have to survive a Senate confirmation process as Congress steers towards midterm election with the balance of party power in both chambers at stake.
Senators voted to confirm Blanche, Dhillon and Pirro last year in their current roles, but administration officials are increasingly facing bipartisan scrutiny.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis has criticized Pirro’s investigation into Powell, for example, and said he would withhold support for Trump’s pick Kevin Warsh until the Justice Department drops its probe.
The White House, meanwhile, isn’t ready to name names.
“With respect to names that are floated, there are always names floated in the press,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters April 15.
“Sometimes I have a chuckle when I read some of the reports about certain people floated for certain jobs,” she said. “As far as the president is concerned right now, Todd Blanche remains the acting Attorney General. The president feels he's doing a good job, and that's where it remains right now.”
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