Todd Blanche hasn’t stopped putting Trump ahead of the law. That’s why he can’t be attorney general. | Editorial
He spent years as the president’s personal attorney. His work in the Justice Department so far suggests he never really changed jobs.
The U.S. attorney general is often called the people’s lawyer because he or she serves the public interest by guarding the legal rights of taxpayers, residents, victims of crimes, and the environment.
But the attorney general is not supposed to be the White House consigliere, abusing the rule of law, carrying out political vendettas, and protecting the powerful.
Todd Blanche has shown he works solely for the president and not the people.
That is why he should not be confirmed after the Senate Judiciary Committee meets on Wednesday regarding his nomination to be the permanent attorney general.
Blanche, who has been serving as the acting attorney general, is willing to do whatever Donald Trump wants. He will even go to extremes to protect the president from political or legal trouble.
In fact, Blanche has not been able to separate himself from his prior role as Trump’s personal defense attorney, in which he was paid nearly $10 million by a political action committee.
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In that capacity, Blanche represented Trump in the losing criminal case involving a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election and a six-figure hush-money payment to an adult film star who said she and the president had sex.
He also led Trump’s criminal defense team in the federal classified documents and election obstruction cases brought by the Department of Justice, which he currently oversees.
Since joining the Justice Department, first as the deputy attorney general, Blanche has failed to carry out his sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Instead, he has continued to do Trump’s bidding. Let us count the ways.
Blanche played a central role in the proposed $1.8 billion slush fund designed to compensate individuals claiming to be victims of political targeting, including insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Blanche defended the initiative before Congress. He later abandoned the proposal following bipartisan backlash, but refused to put the commitment in writing.
At the same time, Blanche handed Trump and his family broad immunity from audits by the IRS. The unheard-of perk — which a judge ruled Monday was self-dealing — could further embolden them to avoid paying taxes and as much as $100 million in penalties.
The Justice Department under Blanche, an election denier, is also taking steps to weaken election security instead of protecting voting rights.
Blanche was also deeply involved in plotting how to defend against the growing furor in the MAGA base demanding the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Two New York Times reporters detailed how Blanche participated in White House meetings last summer to discuss how to manage the fallout. One meeting was held in the Situation Room — a secure bunker reserved mainly for classified and high-stakes national security, not political scandals involving a pedophile who abused scores of young women and was a close friend of Trump.
Shortly after the strategy session, in a highly unusual move, Blanche met personally with Ghislaine Maxwell, the Epstein associate convicted of sex trafficking. None of the prosecutors involved in her case were included.
After the meeting, Maxwell was transferred to a more relaxed minimum-security federal prison camp that critics said reeked of a quid pro quo of an easier time and a possible pardon in exchange for favorable testimony regarding Trump’s ties to Epstein.
Blanche has also slow-walked the release of the Epstein files. So far, only about half of the more than six million documents have been made public, despite Congress passing a law requiring everything to be made public by Dec. 19, 2025.
Many of the files released have extensive redactions. Even still, Trump’s name appears thousands of times in the files that have been made public. What else is being hidde?
Trump fired Pam Bondi as attorney general in April in large part because she did not move fast enough to indict his political enemies.
He installed Blanche as the acting AG, who quickly showed he got the message.
Blanche secured federal indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and the Southern Poverty Law Center, while opening sham investigations involving the writer E. Jean Carroll, former CIA Director John Brennan, and Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump aide.
The indictments and investigations of Trump’s perceived enemies reek of vindictive prosecution and abuse of power. Trump supporters who cheer the investigations should be wary of the dangerous precedent being set, the breakdown in the rule of law, and the demise of the Justice Department’s independence.
Everyone — including 100 former judges — knows Blanche is unfit to be attorney general.
We need just a few honorable senators to stop the madness before it is too late.
