It did not take long for the pictures to come off the wall.
Within hours of the news that President Donald Trump had fired Pam Bondi as attorney general, images began circulating of her framed portrait, unceremoniously removed from its place of honor near the president and vice president on the walls of Justice Department offices.
One photo obtained by MS NOW showed Bondi’s portrait in a trash bin.
Current and former DOJ officials said it’s a reflection of how deeply unpopular Bondi was with career officials and agents, thousands of whom left the department rather than follow her orders. Dozens more were forced out.
Many of those officials remain angry about an episode at the beginning of her term, when Bondi entered a secure area of the DOJ offices of the national security division and saw that President Joe Biden’s portrait was still on the wall, along with former Attorney General Merrick Garland. Bondi demoted a respected career veteran over the pictures still hanging in the offices after Trump’s inauguration.
In interviews, Bondi recounted how she took the photos down herself. She cited the episode as evidence that career DOJ employees were more loyal to Democrats than Republicans.
“I went up on the seventh floor, which is the national security division. The entire floor is a SCIF, so no one can get in there,” Bondi said on Fox News. “So I was able to get the code, open the door, and I look on the wall and see President Biden, Kamala Harris, and Merrick Garland’s paintings still hanging.”
“I personally took all three photos down,” she added. “I put them in front of someone who said to me, ‘Oh well, maintenance is really slow here. I said, ‘Well it took me about 30 seconds to get them off the wall.’”
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What Bondi did not discuss publicly was the respected veteran she demoted over the incident: Devin DeBacker. He had been the acting chief of the national security division.
“They better take her picture down,” one former national security division official, who is among several still disturbed by Bondi’s removal of DeBacker, told MS NOW.
Nearly all of the senior career officials in the Biden DOJ served loyally and ably during Trump’s first term, without incident.
Now it’s Bondi who has been shown the door, and many DOJ veterans are quietly celebrating.
Bondi could not be reached for comment.
Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for MS NOW.
Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.