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Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Thurs­day that Pam Bon­di is out as his at­tor­ney gen­er­al, end­ing the con­tentious tenure of a loy­al­ist who up­end­ed the Jus­tice De­part­ment’s cul­ture of in­de­pen­dence from the White House, over­saw large-scale fir­ings of ca­reer em­ploy­ees and moved ag­gres­sive­ly to in­ves­ti­gate the Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent’s per­ceived en­e­mies.

The an­nounce­ment fol­lows months of scruti­ny over the Jus­tice De­part­ment’s han­dling of files re­lat­ed to Jef­frey Ep­stein’s sex traf­fick­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion that made Bon­di the tar­get of an­gry con­ser­v­a­tives even with her close re­la­tion­ship with Trump. She al­so strug­gled to sat­is­fy Trump’s de­mands to pros­e­cute his po­lit­i­cal ri­vals, with mul­ti­ple in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­ject­ed by judges or grand ju­ries or yet to pro­duce charges.

Trump named Deputy At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Todd Blanche as the act­ing at­tor­ney gen­er­al, though three peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter have said he has pri­vate­ly dis­cussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, as a per­ma­nent pick.