Tenure
On February 5, 2025, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas swore Bondi into office as the 87th attorney general. On Bondi's first day in office, she shut down the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, shut down the DOJ's Task Force KleptoCapture, and cut back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Bondi largely took an implementation role as attorney general, with key decisions being made by Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and other White House officials.
In March 2025, Bondi announced the establishment of the Joint Task Force October 7 (JTF 10–7) to seek justice for victims of the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas, which killed approximately 1,200 people, including 47 U.S. citizens, and saw about 250 others abducted, including eight Americans. The task force was created to focus on prosecuting the perpetrators of the attack, pursuing charges against Hamas leadership, and targeting individuals and entities providing support or financing to Hamas, related Iranian proxies, and affiliates. Following the United States government group chat leak in March 2025, Bondi indicated that the leak would not be investigated, saying that the information shared was not classified.
On April 1, 2025, Bondi directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the Luigi Mangione case.
On May 12, 2025, Bondi convened a task force on anti-Christian bias.
On May 15, 2025, it was reported that Bondi sold at least $1 million worth of shares in Trump Media on "Liberation Day".
On June 5, 2025, a coalition of attorneys brought ethics complaints against Bondi. However, the Florida Bar said it would not investigate Bondi while she was in office. On May 27, 2026, after Bondi had left office, the coalition of more than 120 attorneys, led by former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince, filed a new and expanded complaint.
On September 9, 2025, in response to the killing of Iryna Zarutska, Bondi said she would seek the death penalty for the perpetrator and that he would "never again see the light of day as a free man".
On September 19, 2025, in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Bondi said, "We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech." Her comments were criticized across the political spectrum, and the next day she clarified that she was referring to hate speech only involving threats of violence.
On October 7, 2025, Bondi testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in what NPR described as a "... that often turned combative." Democrats accused Bondi of politicizing the Justice Department, while Republicans defended her actions and Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley commended her for "resetting priorities." Bondi called the Arctic Frost investigation a "historic betrayal of public trust" and said it represented "an unconstitutional, undemocratic abuse of power."
In March 2025, Chief Judge James Boasberg of the federal district court in D.C. issued an order to temporarily block the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He also orally ordered the deportation flights "to be returned to the United States", to be "complied with immediately"; however, the Trump administration completed the deportations anyway, with Bondi and other Justice Department officials later arguing in a March 17 legal filing that "an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction".
Bondi and other Justice Department officials then submitted a March 18 legal filing stating that the cancelation of deportation flights ordered by Boasberg, had "no justification to order the provision of additional information, and that doing so would be inappropriate". During a media interview on March 19, Bondi said regarding Boasberg: "this judge has no right to ask those questions" regarding details about the deportation flights, and has "no power" to order the Trump administration to stop the deportation flights, as Bondi declared that judges are "meddling in our government".
On April 2025, Bondi said that fentanyl seizures in the first 100 days of Trump's second term as president had saved 21 million lives. Two days later, she increased this estimate to 119 million. During a subsequent cabinet meeting, she said that during the same period, DOJ agencies had seized "3,400 kilos of fentanyl...which saved—are you ready for this, media?—258 million lives." These statistics were criticized, as only 70,000 fentanyl deaths occur in the U.S. each year, and the claim of lives saved represents 75% of the total U.S. population.
In August 2025, Bondi announced on Twitter that the Department of Justice and the United States Department of State were increasing the reward to $50 million for Nicolás Maduro, accusing the Venezuelan president of collaborating with foreign terrorist organizations, such as Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Cartel of the Suns, to bring deadly violence to the United States. Maduro was previously indicted by the first Trump administration in 2020, along with other Venezuelan officials and former Colombian FARC members, for what it described as "narco-terrorism": the trafficking of cocaine to the United States to wage a health war on its citizens. The reward was originally set at $15 million in March 2020 before being raised to $25 million by the Biden administration in January 2025.
Bondi stated that the DOJ had seized approximately $700 million in assets linked to Maduro, including multiple luxury homes in Florida, a mansion in the Dominican Republic, private jets, vehicles, a horse farm, jewelry, and large sums of cash. Bondi described Maduro's government as an "organized crime operation" that continued to function despite the seizures.
Beginning in 2025, at the direction of Bondi, forty U.S. states were requested to share citizen voter data for the purposes of reviewing state compliance with election laws. Bondi's lawsuit to release the voter rolls in California was dismissed in January 2026. Other judges in Georgia, Oregon, and Michigan also moved to dismiss the federal government's lawsuits given a total lack of evidence or support for the request.
In January 2026 during the Minnesota protests against ICE, Bondi requested governor Tim Walz to share the state's voter rolls, including information on individuals who receive public assistance in that state, saying it would be beneficial to ICE. The case was dismissed.
In February 2026, an FBI raid was conducted on a Fulton County, Georgia election office after a judge ruled Bondi's written demand for voter rolls in the state was unsubstantiated and dismissed. Bondi continued to publicly state the importance of investigating election fraud.
In late February 2025, a number of files related to Jeffrey Epstein were released, heavily redacted and offering little new information. Bondi was criticized for her handling of the release, with commentators on the right and left labeling the move a political stunt rather than a genuine effort at transparency. Arwa Mahdawi, writing for The Guardian, derided the release as "a lot of redacted nothing".
In July 2025, the Department of Justice and the FBI wrote a memo saying there was no evidence that a supposed list of Epstein's clients existed. Previously in February 2025, Fox News journalist John Roberts had asked Bondi if the Justice Department would be publishing "the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients", to which Bondi responded: "It's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump. I'm reviewing that." Bondi also previously claimed there were "tens of thousands of videos" showing Epstein "with children or child porn," a claim later walked back by FBI Director Kash Patel. The contradictions drew criticism from some figures in the MAGA movement.
Following the controversy, deputy director of the FBI Dan Bongino considered resigning from his position due to his disagreement with Bondi over how the Justice Department handled the announcement of its decision not to release further records related to Epstein. President Trump then defended Bondi by posting on Truth Social that she was doing "a FANTASTIC JOB". The Wall Street Journal later reported that, during a briefing on the Justice Department's review of the files in May, Bondi informed Trump that his name was included among the documents.
Bondi was summoned for a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on February 11, 2026. The hearing was described by news outlets as a "clash" between Bondi and Democratic representatives, with the notable exception of Republican representative Thomas Massie, who criticized Bondi and the DOJ for redaction failures.
During the hearing, when Bondi was asked how many of Epstein's accomplices she had indicted, to which Bondi stated, "The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000 and the Nasdaq smashing records. Americans' 401Ks and retirements are booming. That's what we should be talking about." This comment received significant criticism. Bondi also refused to respond to questions related to the department's ongoing investigation of any co-conspirators previously identified. According to an internal memo, the Department of Justice closed any ongoing investigations into co-conspirators in July 2025.
On February 14, 2026, Bondi stated that all the materials required to be released under the Epstein Transparency Act had been released to the public. Bondi also stated the department declined to publish the remaining files, citing client attorney privileges.
On April 29, Bondi agreed to appear before the U.S. House Oversight Committee to discuss how the Justice Department had handled the Epstein files. Bondi testified on May 29.
Bondi has said that she hopes Ghislaine Maxwell dies in prison, calling her "a monster, just like Jeffrey Epstein."
