On July 11, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired her personal ethics adviser, Joseph Tirrell.
No explanation was given for his immediate removal. Making the decision yet more baffling, Tirrell has twenty years worth of experience at the department. However, Article II of the Constitution, which regards presidential powers, was cited, in yet another instance of the Trump administration’s embrace of an imperial presidency.
Tirrell’s termination may be connected to the purge of twenty officials who worked with former Special Counsel Jack Smith. Tirrell himself advised Smith’s office on ethics.
His firing also comes as the White House is haunted by Jeffrey Epstein’s association with Trump; Bondi has refused to release documentation pertaining to Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. She may be involved in a coverup to protect Trump and other allies, incentivizing her to remove Tirrell.
Generally, Bondi is unconstrained by ethics. The Trump Foundation bribed her for $25,000 in March 2016, resulting in her refusal to join New York’s lawsuit against Trump University. She is also at massive risk of conflicts of interest, as she was a FARA-registered lobbyist for Qatar, which paid her $115,000 a month.
