In January 2026, a claim resurfaced online that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi fired a Department of Justice staffer after she found a copy of the U.S. Constitution on his desk. Bondi allegedly said the employee had "raised suspicions" by using "telltale phrases like 'due process'" in DOJ memos.
The rumor emerged amid concerns that people deported during President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown were being denied due process, with multiple reports of U.S. citizens facing deportation.
For example, Facebook user Andy Borowitz posted the claim (archived) on Jan. 17 alongside the following caption:
WASHINGTON—Calling it a "serious breach of the Department of Justice's code of conduct," on Friday Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she had terminated a career DOJ employee who was caught with a copy of the U.S. Constitution on his desk.Bondi said that the employee, who had worked at the department for 37 years, had "raised suspicions" by using "telltale phrases like 'due process'" in DOJ memos.At Bondi's direction, US marshals ransacked his office, discovered the offending document, and frog-marched him out of the building.Bondi took the opportunity to remind all DOJ staffers that the U.S. Constitution is on the Republican Party's banned reading list.
Some readers seemed to interpret the rumor as a factual recounting of real-life events. However, a Google search of the keywords "Pam Bondi fired DOJ employee Constitution" returned no results confirming the claim.
(Google.com)
Rather, the rumor originated with The Borowitz Report, a site that describes its output as satirical in nature. Its author, Andy Borowitz, wrote on its About page:
I've been writing satirical news since I was eighteen. This represents either commitment to a genre or arrested development.
The New Yorker featured The Borowitz Report as a column for 25 years; Borowitz announced in 2023 that the magazine dropped his column for financial reasons.
This wasn't the first time the rumor circulated — we previously debunked it in April 2025.
The fictional story originally spread as Bondi defended the DOJ's decision to put an attorney on leave for not defending the Trump administration's position on a deportation case. Bondi made the comments on Fox News on April 6, 2025 (at 7:13 of the video below).
Snopes has addressed similar stories stemming from The Borowitz Report in the past, including the satirical claim that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth drunkenly crashed into the Pentagon and a rumor that Trump nominated former drug lord El Chapo as U.S. ambassador to Mexico.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.