President Donald Trump on Monday nominated Todd Blanche, his former personal lawyer who has served as acting attorney general since April, to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer on a permanent basis. The nomination requires Senate confirmation, where Republicans currently hold the majority.
“He’s a very talented guy,” Trump told a podcast earlier this week, suggesting Blanche was set to receive the nod.
Blanche, a former federal prosecutor in New York, joined Trump’s legal team in March 2023, just after the president was indicted for the first time in a New York state case involving hush-money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts for fraudulently falsifying business records in that case. 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.
Trump fired Pam Bondi as attorney general in April, according to reports, after frustration over the speed at which the department was moving to prosecute the president’s political adversaries. Blanche was appointed acting attorney general and was later elevated to the permanent nomination.
As acting attorney general, Blanche oversaw a series of actions that have drawn scrutiny from Democrats and some Republicans. The Justice Department under Blanche negotiated an agreement to resolve a $10 billion lawsuit filed by the president to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate Trump allies — described by critics as a “slush fund” — which Blanche abruptly announced had been abandoned on Tuesday amid widespread condemnation. Language to bar the fund’s operation in law was debated last week as the Senate voted to sidestep a Democratic filibuster of immigration enforcement funding. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican in a vulnerable seat, has drafted legislation with bipartisan support to explicitly block creation of the fund.
Blanche also personally signed a Justice Department memo attached to an anti-weaponization settlement permanently blocking the IRS from auditing or pursuing past tax claims against Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization, according to the Guardian.
“You are still acting as the president’s personal lawyer, not as acting attorney general,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, told Blanche at a Senate hearing last month, according to the Guardian.
Under Blanche, the Justice Department filed criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, representing an escalation of its investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, according to the Guardian. The department moved to vacate seditious conspiracy convictions against Proud Boys members, fired career prosecutors, released a report accusing career prosecutors of wrongfully targeting anti-abortion protesters, and removed press releases about prosecutions of rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
“Todd Blanche has never stopped acting as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer,” Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer who now leads Justice Connection, said in a statement reported by the Guardian. “His unwavering fealty to the president and destruction of institutional norms should disqualify him from leading the only agency with its foundational virtue in its name.”
Blanche has said he did not seek the role but would accept the president’s decision. “If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir,’” Blanche said in April, shortly after being named acting attorney general, according to the Guardian. “I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.”
The broader U-6 unemployment rate — which includes discouraged workers and those forced into part-time roles for economic reasons — stood at 8.1% in the most recent vintage reading, according to FRED data.