President Donald Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on Attorney General Pam Bondi over her failure to take Deep State scalps.
The president appeared to leak a private message he had sent to Bondi accusing her of ‘all talk, no action’ and demanding successful prosecutions of his political enemies.
Trump listed off FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff of California, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, claiming ‘they’re all guilty as hell,’ in the message shared to his Truth Social platform.
The president told Bondi, ‘We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.’
Much of his fury was directed at the outgoing US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who declined to prosecute James for mortgage fraud over what he said was a lack of evidence.
Siebert also failed to prosecute Comey after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused him of threatening Trump in a social media post.
Siebert resigned last week but Trump in his Truth Social post claimed that he’d been fired.
‘He even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so,’ Trump wrote.
Trump floated a replacement for Siebert in the post, Lindsey Halligan, a member of the White House counsel, who has a track record of defending the president in court – including the classified documents case.
In a follow-up post made about a half hour later, Trump officially announced his intention to nominate Halligan to the US Attorney position in Virginia’s eastern district.
He described Siebert as a ‘Democrat Endorsed ‘Republican” and said Halligan will ‘be Fair, Smart, and will provide, desperately needed, JUSTICE FOR ALL!’
Trump also walked back his prior exasperated tone with Bondi, saying she is ‘doing a GREAT job.’
The earlier post, which appeared to be a deliberate leak of a private text message he had sent to Bondi, was an extraordinary public attack on the nation’s top prosecutor.
Trump’s frustration with the AG over her failed efforts to prosecute his political enemies comes as her position is already weakened by the Jeffrey Epstein debacle.
Bondi, a longtime Trump loyalist who defended him during his first impeachment trial and served as Florida AG from 2011 to 2019, was appointed with expectations she’d aggressively pursue revenge and ‘drain the swamp.’
Trump’s main targets, Comey, Schiff and James, ran what the president describes as ‘witch hunts’, orchestrated by the Deep State to ruin his credibility before the electorate.
Trump fired Comey as FBI chief in 2017 amid the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference, which the president has repeatedly called a hoax.
Schiff, a vocal Trump critic and high-ranking Democrat Representative from California, led the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump over withholding aid from Ukraine.
Democratic New York AG James brought the 2022 civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization which resulted in a $454 million judgment. It is currently under appeal.
Trump’s backers argue these figures represent the unchecked partisanship of the liberal elite; while his critics claim that his demands for prosecutions are an authoritarian overreach which ignores the rule of law.
The president has set his sights on the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, a key federal prosecutorial hub where he is pushing for investigations into the trio.
To help Bondi fulfil this task, Trump now wants his trusted attorney Halligan in the role.
The glamorous lawyer has been representing Trump for years, most prominently serving as one of his attorneys in the case against him for retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
In August 2024, that case was dismissed by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, with her arguing that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.
Smith appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which then formally dismissed the case in February 2025, marking its end.
More recently, Halligan was leading the charge in Trump’s review of historical exhibits at the Smithsonian.
In an August interview with Fox News, Halligan said slavery was an overemphasized topic at the museum in Washington, D.C.
‘The fact our country was involved in slavery is awful — no one thinks otherwise,’ she said.
‘But what I saw when I was going through the museum, personally, was an overemphasis on slavery, and I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we’ve come since slavery.’
‘There’s a lot of history to our country, both positive and negative, but we need to keep moving forward. We can’t just keep focusing on the negative — all that does is divide us,’ she added.
Halligan’s new promotion comes after Bondi reportedly tapped Mary ‘Maggie’ Cleary to be the acting US attorney in that office.
Cleary has served as an assistant US attorney in the Western District of Virginia and is perhaps most known for her attempts to beat back an allegation made by an anonymous individual that she was present during the January 6 Capitol Riot.
Cleary, a deeply conservative Republican, was briefly placed on administrative leave but was cleared after a brief internal investigation, Politico reported.
If Halligan is to become the permanent US attorney, she will have to be confirmed by the Senate.
Since the Republicans have a 53-seat majority in the Senate, it is likely she will ascend to the position.
