Former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was diagnosed with thyroid cancer right after being fired by President Donald Trump in April, she revealed Wednesday.
She has been undergoing treatment and recovering from surgery she underwent a few weeks ago, she told CNN on Wednesday, adding that she’s “doing well.”
Bondi went public with her cancer diagnosis after news of it began leaking a few days earlier. Her acknowledgment came ahead of her scheduled appearance Friday before the House Oversight Committee as it probes the deeds of late disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Last year a “recently torn cornea” kept her away from a summit on human trafficking, she said at the time.
She is also set to join the Trump administration’s new Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), which “brings together the nation’s foremost luminaries in science and technology” to focus on artificial intelligence and help the president shape policy, the White House said in a statement Monday.
Bondi lost her job as the nation’s top prosecutor in early April because of Trump’s dissatisfaction with her handling of the Epstein files, and because he felt she wasn’t moving quickly enough to file charges against his perceived political enemies. Mere day later, her Department of Justice portraits had been taken off the wall, and one of them had been spotted in the trash. Bondi has remained a staunch Trump loyalist.
In his Truth Social post announcing her dismissal, Trump called her “a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend” and promised she would “be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future.”