Attorney General Pam Bondi deleted a social media post on December 31, 2025, after critics caught her attempting to credit President Donald Trump for a steep decline in drug overdose deaths that occurred during the Biden administration.
Bondi shared a graph tracking overdose deaths from October 2015 to October 2024, which showed deaths surged nationwide beginning in 2015. The data came from JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The graph revealed that the overdose rate spiked just before the start of the coronavirus pandemic during Trump’s first term. Deaths then plateaued in 2022 and 2023 before falling sharply from October 2023 to October 2024, when Joe Biden was president.
Although the chart explicitly demonstrated the decrease happened during Biden’s presidency, Bondi presented the data as proof of the Trump administration’s achievements. In her subsequently removed post, she stated that Trump had secured the border and that Department of Justice officers had confiscated hundreds of millions of potentially deadly fentanyl doses. She claimed they were vigorously pursuing legal action against drug dealers and cartel leadership, calling these “the results.”
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California quickly responded to Bondi’s post, thanking her for “unintentionally giving massive credit to Joe Biden.” Social media users pointed out that the graph’s title made clear it referred to the period before Trump took office in January 2025.
Following the criticism, Bondi removed her post. Lieu responded by sharing a screenshot of the initial message and commented that the truth was painful. He stated that Bondi had been excessively praising Trump with another dishonest, servile tweet, but noted the chart she included ended in October 2024, thereby highlighting the excellent accomplishments achieved under Joe Biden’s leadership.
The Biden-era decline represented a 27 percent reduction in overdose deaths. These gains may be at risk due to a $1 billion cut from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Agency.
Trump has used the drug epidemic as justification for ordering a series of attacks on boats in the Caribbean, killing 97 people. The president has also struck infrastructure in Venezuela and claimed that some of his sweeping tariffs on products from dozens of U.S. trade partners are in response to the fentanyl crisis.
However, the president’s tough-on-narco-terrorists posturing has been undermined by his willingness to pardon nearly 100 people convicted of drug-related crimes. During his first term, Trump granted pardons or commutations to almost 90 people for drug-related crimes. Since taking office in January, he has freed 10 more people.
Among those pardoned were former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who trafficked cocaine into the United States, and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht’s black-market site on the dark web generated sales of illegal goods and services, including drugs.
The deleted post is not the first controversy surrounding Bondi’s leadership of the Department of Justice. She has faced criticism from both Democrats and Republicans over the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, with accusations that the department is actively scrubbing images and mentions of Trump from the documents.
Critics on social media mocked Bondi for the error. One user wrote that everything the administration does is corrupt and toxic to Americans. Another called it “sloppy work by the incompetent” attorney general, adding that she could not find even one accomplishment of Trump to tout, so she lied and covered it up when caught.