Analysis: Pam Bondi was destined to fail. But she also made it worse | CNN Politics

Attorney general may be the most impossible job in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Trump demands things that are not only ethically problematic, but also that reside somewhere in the space between highly difficult and impossible. Nobody has gotten the balance right. Jeff Sessions tried to be the institutionalist and quickly marginalized himself. William Barr then took some astoundingly politicized actions on Trump’s behalf, but then was unwilling to go quite as far as Trump demanded. Pam Bondi went even further than Barr in the service of bending the Justice Department politically for Trump. But after her firing Thursday, she wound up serving the shortest tenure for a confirmed attorney general in 60 years. Bondi was, in a lot of ways, destined to fail. But she also clearly made things worse for herself. And that’s especially the case when it comes to two sticking points between her and Trump: the Epstein files and Trump’s thus-far-fruitless retribution campaign. The most damaging aspect of Bondi’s tenure was undoubtedly the Epstein files. Trump and his campaign did Bondi no favors by playing up Trump’s promise to release the files back in 2024. Then Trump seemed to s