Trump’s AG Pam Bondi called “lying terrorist” and “failure” as approval plummets over Epstein controversy

Benjamin ThompsonDecember 24, 2025

New polls show that her approval rating has declined by over 50 percent as the controversy over how the Jeffrey Epstein files were handled continues to grow — Credit: AG Pam Bondi via X

Florida – Over the past year, support for the former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi has decreased drastically. New polls show that her approval rating has declined by over 50 percent as the controversy over how the Jeffrey Epstein files were handled continues to grow. The decline is especially notable in Florida, where Bondi previously built her political reputation as the state’s attorney general and once enjoyed strong name recognition.

AtlasIntel’s most recent poll show that Bondi’s public image peaked in February, when she had a small net positive rating. Since then, sentiment has shifted dramatically. The most recent poll, which was done in mid-December with 2,315 people responding, shows that Bondi now has a very bad public image. This is because many people are unhappy with her leadership at the Justice Department.

The survey happened at the same time as a legal deadline for the Department of Justice to make public documents related to the Epstein investigation. Some records have been made public, but the process has been long and full of arguments. Many of the papers that were made public had a lot of information redacted, which upset Epstein survivors and advocacy groups who say that the disclosures don’t meet transparency requirements.

There was further controversy when a file briefly disappeared from the public database and then came back. There were rumors of political interference because the paper allegedly had pictures of former President Donald Trump in it. The Justice Department said they did nothing illegal, but the incident made many who were already suspicious of how the Epstein case is being handled even more so.

Bondi has been at the core of this discussion, and she has often been the public face of the administration’s handling of the Epstein issue. Earlier this year, she gave conservative influencers in the White House binders full with Epstein-related information. This made people wonder if she was only sharing certain information. Months later, her agency minimized the likelihood of more investigations into Epstein’s network. Critics fear this position could hinder further scrutiny of influential people.

Many were even more concerned during the summer when the Bureau of Prisons sent Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a lower-security facility after she spoke with a high-ranking official from the Justice Department. That individual used to be Trump’s personal lawyer, which makes some think that politics may be playing a role in decisions related to the case. The government has denied those allegations, saying that any suppressed information is supposed to safeguard the victims’ privacy.

In addition to the Epstein files, Bondi has been criticized in other ways as well. Trump openly told her in September to go after political opponents with criminal charges, which was an uncommon step that led to a debate over the independence of prosecutors. Around the same time, civil rights experts disagreed with her proposal for widespread hate speech prosecutions after the murder of a conservative activist, saying that such steps could violate constitutional rights.

Public opinion has also been affected by immigration enforcement. Aggressive deportation methods, such as controversial arrests and a high-profile erroneous removal that officials later admitted, have led to legal challenges and more scrutiny of Bondi’s time in office. These problems seem to have changed how people see things, especially in Florida, where voters are closely watching how one of the state’s most important legal authorities deals at a time of growing controversy.

In a recent post on X, Pam Bondi was heavily criticized by other X users about the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“Literally, no one believes this,” one user commented, while another said “No one believes you.”

Other users called Bondi ‘a failure’ and ‘a terrorist.’