Is Trump turning on his own attorney general?

President Donald Trump has been venting to aides in recent weeks about his hand-picked Attorney General Pam Bondi, complaining that she hasn’t been aggressive—or effective—enough in carrying out his priorities at the Justice Department.

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Trump’s frustration has been building for months and appears tied to a broader effort to pressure the DOJ to move faster and hit harder. Never shy about airing grievances with his Cabinet, Trump has grown particularly vocal about Bondi.

That tension is notable given how closely Bondi has aligned herself with Trump. Since taking office, she has fired prosecutors involved in past investigations of him and has become a familiar defender on Fox News. 

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Even so, allies say it still hasn’t been enough to satisfy Trump.

This month alone, people familiar with the matter told the Journal, Trump has floated the idea of appointing special counsels to bypass what he sees as a sluggish DOJ. His chief complaint is Bondi’s failure to quickly and decisively prosecute figures he views as political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Those efforts have not gone Trump’s way. In November, a judge dismissed cases targeting both Comey and James, ruling that the Trump aide who secured the indictments had been improperly appointed. And Trump has been angry that the matters have stalled rather than accelerated.

Bondi has also taken heat for the DOJ’s rollout of the Epstein files, which has dragged on for months and fueled conspiracy theories among Trump’s base. 

When White House chief of staff Susie Wiles criticized Bondi’s handling of the files in a Vanity Fair profile, Trump privately agreed, according to two officials.

“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said. “First, she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk.”

“There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk,” Wiles added.

Trump has also been hearing from outside allies that Bondi isn’t delivering. One of the loudest critics has been Steve Bannon, who told the Journal that supporters are “desperate for action” on issues like the 2020 election and the Russia investigation “and just haven’t seen it.”

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All of that has reportedly made its way back to Bondi herself, with Trump complaining directly to her, even as the White House insists publicly that everything is fine.

“Pam is doing an excellent job. She has been my friend for many years,” Trump said in a statement to the Journal. “Tremendous progress is being made against radical left lunatics who are good at only one thing, cheating in elections and the crimes they commit.”

Other senior officials, including Vice President JD Vance, also issued statements praising Bondi. Bondi, through a spokesperson, said she remains committed to carrying out Trump’s agenda.

Still, there are signs her standing may be slipping. She was notably absent when Trump announced the capture of Nicolás Maduro. And last week, Vance unveiled a new high-level DOJ role to investigate fraud—one that reports to the White House rather than to Bondi.

The dynamic echoes Trump’s fraught relationships with his first-term attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and William Barr. But whether this is the beginning of the end for Bondi or simply another pressure campaign to push her further, the message is clear: In Trump’s DOJ, loyalty is never a permanent shield.

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