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Donald Trump nominated Todd Blanche to serve permanently as attorney general on Monday, lining up his former personal lawyer to be the country’s top law enforcement officer.
The US president suggested earlier this week that Blanche, who was appointed on an acting basis in April after the president fired Pam Bondi, was set to receive the nod. “He’s a very talented guy,” Trump told a podcast.
Bondi was ousted after she came under fire for her handling of the Epstein files, an issue that has dogged the president for many years. Blanche’s appointment will require confirmation from the Senate, where Republicans currently hold the majority.
The former federal prosecutor in New York represented Trump against charges of covering up hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, in which Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts for fraudulently falsifying business records. Blanche also represented Trump in the federal classified documents case and election obstruction cases, both of which were pre-empted by Trump’s electoral victory.
“This is about the Department of Justice working hand in hand with outside organizations – that their sole mission was to go after individuals who were pro-life – the Department of Justice took that information and used it as part of their ongoing investigations and prosecutions,” Blanche told NBC News’s Laura Jarrett, shortly after being named acting attorney general.
“What I can do as its leader, at least right now, is making sure that we continue to push forward on the agenda that we were assigned to do. So that means making America safe again is the big umbrella, but then fundamentally it’s addressing weaponization, and making sure that things that happened over the past several years don’t happen in the future.”
Under Blanche, federal prosecutors have pursued a series of controversial actions, including the unveiling of criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director, representing an escalation of its investigation into former CIA director, John Brennan, and the removal of press releases about prosecutions of rioters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6.
Blanche’s close personal connection to the president has been fodder for Democratic attacks.
“These survivors have tried to share their stories with you,” said US senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, at a senate hearing last month in which Blanche was questioned on his handling of the Epstein files disclosures.
“Instead, you spent two days interviewing his convicted associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and shortly thereafter, she was moved to a lower security prison camp with special perks. Mr Blanche, the record is crystal clear. You are still acting as the president’s personal lawyer, not as acting attorney general.”
As an important Trump ally in the department, Blanche also played a key role in the effort to create a $1.8bn secretive fund to compensate Trump’s allies, as part of the administration’s broader policy attacking the “weaponization” of the justice department. Blanche also signed the justice department memo attached to the anti-weaponization settlement permanently blocking the IRS from auditing or pursuing past tax claims against President Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization.
“When you are issuing memos granting the president, his children, and their companies immunity from audits or prosecution for tax offenses, your previous role becomes relevant information,” said US representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, in a hearing before the House appropriations committee last week.
“When you preside over a deal to take $1.8bn of taxpayer money to create a slush fund to pay out violent criminals who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers, you cannot be surprised when people question your impartiality.”
Even Republicans pushed back against the proposed fund, which could become more consequential in the Senate confirmation process. Language to bar its operation in law was hotly debated last week as the Senate was voting to sidestep a months-long Democratic filibuster of ICE and homeland security funding.
Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican in a vulnerable seat, has drafted legislation with bipartisan support to explicitly block the creation of the fund.
On Tuesday, Blanche abruptly announced the fund had been axed, amid widespread condemnation of the plan.
