Pam Bondi was diagnosed with thyroid cancer shortly after leaving the Justice Department in early April, according to a report surfaced Tuesday evening, and she has since undergone treatment and is recovering.
Bondi, 60, has not publicly addressed the diagnosis. But Katie Miller, in a post on X, said Bondi had been “quietly kicking cancer's ass the last few weeks” and added that she “has a heart of gold.” The comment was the clearest public signal so far that the former attorney general’s health scare had been serious but handled out of view.
The diagnosis landed after Bondi’s departure from the department, which means the health issue was not public when Trump removed her as attorney general weeks before it surfaced. Trump had already shifted her into a new advisory role, appointing her to a committee focused on artificial intelligence policy and expected to place her on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, where she would help coordinate between federal officials and technology executives. The panel is co-chaired by David Sacks and Michael Kratsios.
Bondi’s exit was already contentious. The Daily Beast reported in early April that she had been fired, saying she was the second Trump Cabinet official to be removed after Kristi Noem. It said she was ousted after failing to move quickly enough against Trump’s political adversaries and over her handling of the Epstein files. Todd Blanche has been serving as acting top prosecutor since her departure.
The latest health disclosure comes after a stretch in which Bondi had already missed a public event for medical reasons. In July, she skipped CPAC’s Summit Against Human Trafficking because of a health issue tied to a recently torn cornea. The broader pattern around Trump’s circle has now become harder to miss: Susie Wiles announced a breast cancer diagnosis in March, Tulsi Gabbard stepped down Friday to care for her husband’s extremely rare bone cancer, and Bondi’s own diagnosis now adds another public-health disruption around the same political orbit.
What matters next is not the diagnosis itself, but how much Bondi is expected to do in her new advisory post while recovering. Trump has moved her from the front line of law enforcement into a policy role that keeps her close to the White House and to the tech executives the administration wants to engage. The unanswered question is how active she will be as the administration tries to make that transition look seamless.
