Attorney General Pam Bondi heads into Thanksgiving weekend under a cloud of pressure, after a cascade of courtroom blows and internal crises turned an already strained Justice Department into a battleground of procedural chaos, political suspicion and deepening public doubt.

The most damaging setback came early in the week, when U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie voided two of the department’s highest-profile indictments—against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The dismissals weren’t about the facts of the cases. They weren’t even about whether the charges were justified. Instead, they came down to a basic, fatal procedural flaw: Bondi’s hand-picked acting U.S. Attorney, Lindsey Halligan, was not legally appointed. By the time Bondi installed her in September, the statutory 120-day clock for an interim appointment had run out. Only the district court could have done it.

Currie’s ruling was blunt. Because Halligan was unlawfully appointed, “all actions” flowing from her service—including both indictments—were invalid. The door remains open for re-indictment, but the damage was instant. Comey called the prosecution the product of “malevolence and incompetence.” Letitia James dismissed the charges as baseless. Bondi promised an appeal.

But the ruling also intensified long-standing fears about politicized prosecutions inside the department. Halligan handled both grand jury presentations entirely alone—a sharp break from the norm, where career prosecutors typically take the lead to provide internal checks and safeguard impartiality. Court filings and indictment signatures suggest no career staff touched the cases, a fact that aggravated questions about motive and process.

Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb went further, publicly claiming Bondi and Halligan “should be disbarred.” He cited no specific filing or ruling, and no court has echoed his claim. But Cobb was responding to reports that the grand jury never saw the final version of the Comey indictment—a serious allegation given that federal rules require jurors approve the exact charges prosecutors file.

Those procedural concerns spread through the week. A separate federal magistrate judge flagged “investigative missteps,” citing possible Fourth Amendment problems and irregularities in how the grand jury received evidence. Judge Michael Nachmanoff declined to rule, saying the overlapping disputes were “too wavy and too complex” to decide immediately.

Then came a fresh crisis. In a criminal-contempt inquiry overseen by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, the Justice Department named several senior officials—including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—as subjects. The inquiry centers on whether officials ignored a temporary restraining order during March deportations to El Salvador. Public details remain scarce; almost no information about the episode is available in the record. Government filings argue the order didn’t apply to detainees who had already been removed.

For Bondi, the timing could not have been worse. The contempt inquiry reopened questions about the department’s ability to follow court directives—an issue that already loomed over her leadership.

Another headache closed out the week when a misconduct complaint filed by Bondi’s former chief of staff against U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes was dismissed by Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan. The complaint accused Reyes of bias and hostility during a hearing on Trump’s transgender military ban. Srinivasan didn’t address the truth of the allegations; he simply ruled the complaint was filed through the wrong channel and should have been raised as a motion for recusal.

Even Bondi’s shifting posture on the Epstein files returned to public view. Months after arguing that reopening the records would be pointless, she appeared this week once again hinting at new developments—another pivot in a saga that has already tested her credibility.

The department did announce one major case: new charges and a $15 million reward for fugitive former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, accused of running a sprawling cross-border drug enterprise. Bondi touted his organization as one of the world’s most violent.

But with Wedding still at large—and with the department’s institutional turmoil now on full display—the announcement did little to offset the week’s cascading setbacks. As Bondi enters the holiday weekend, she does so carrying the heaviest political and legal burden of her tenure, and with no sign the pressure will ease anytime soon.