Todd Blanche’s nomination as US Attorney General raises a question at the foundation of American law enforcement: Can a man who told his client “I love you, sir” serve as the nation’s top independent prosecutor?
The quote that defined it
When Trump fired Pam Bondi in April and Blanche stepped into the acting AG role, reporters asked whether he wanted the job permanently. His answer crystallized the debate over his nomination before it formally began.
“It’s the greatest honor of a lifetime,” Blanche said at a Justice Department press conference. “If he chooses to nominate me, that’s an honor. 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.'”
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The remark drew immediate criticism from former prosecutors and legal observers who pointed to it as a statement of unconditional deference rather than legal independence. Since Watergate, every attorney general has maintained — at least in principle — that the Justice Department operates free from White House direction.
Blanche has not asserted that independence. Instead, in one of his most public statements since taking the role, he advertised its absence.
The personal lawyer problem
Blanche spent years as Trump’s primary criminal defense attorney, representing the president through the New York hush-money trial and both federal cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith — all resolved before Trump’s return to the White House. That history created a conflict that the Justice Department flagged before Blanche even cleared Senate confirmation as Deputy AG.
Related: Trump kept classified docs linked to business interests, says Jack Smith memo
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Within two weeks of his March 2025 swearing-in, DOJ ethics chief Joseph Tirrell formally briefed Blanche — with a printed PowerPoint presentation — that his involvement in any Justice Department matter touching Trump personally required recusal. Blanche signed an ethics pledge. The DOJ has never publicly identified which cases he is recused from.
When CNN reported the briefing, a department spokeswoman said he “is recused from many cases” but declined to specify which ones. Blanche pushed back on X, calling the reporting “reckless” and saying his compliance was “black and white.” Tirrell lost his position in July 2025.
Former DOJ professional responsibility adviser Benjamin Grimes told CNN the conflict placed Blanche in an impossible position: oversee cases the president cares about and risk their legal viability in court, or recuse himself and risk the fate of Jeff Sessions, whom Trump tormented out of his role after Sessions stepped back from the Russia investigation.
“Congress needs to take action if either Congress or the public find this to be untenable,” Grimes said. “And it is to me.”
The acting AG record
Critics say his acting tenure offers a preview of what confirmation would lock in.
He secured a second indictment of former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in 2020 testimony — after a judge had already dismissed the first attempt — following Trump’s social media call for prosecution and over the objections of career staff who determined Comey’s conduct did not meet the charging threshold. Legal observers noted the contrast with Blanche’s own 2023 court filings defending Trump, in which he argued that “biased prosecutors” had pursued his client despite the evidence rather than because of it.
He launched a civil rights investigation into ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform, and obtained an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center that critics in the legal community described as poorly constructed.
He launched a criminal probe — referred to federal prosecutors in Chicago by DOJ senior leadership — into Reid Hoffman’s nonprofit American Future Republic, which helped fund E. Jean Carroll’s successful civil lawsuit against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, over allegations of possible money laundering, obstruction, and conspiracy. The top federal prosecutor in Chicago subsequently denied his office had opened an investigation into Carroll herself, while Hoffman said the probe was designed to “silence” critics who had taken Trump to court.
He moved against journalists after Trump complained privately about Iran war media leaks — reportedly passing Blanche news articles annotated with a sticky note reading “treason,” per the Wall Street Journal — Blanche publicly warned reporters that those with knowledge of classified leaks “should not be surprised if they receive a subpoena.” First Amendment attorneys called it direct targeting of the press at presidential direction.
On May 19, Blanche quietly added a separate addendum to the DOJ website — without public announcement — permanently barring the IRS from auditing or pursuing claims against Trump, his family, his trusts, and his business affiliates for past tax returns.
Read: Trump (The Government) Settles IRS Tax Suit By Trump (The Citizen)
The order, which declares the government “forever barred and precluded” from examining those returns, settled Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. At a subsequent congressional hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro told Blanche directly that he had handed the president’s family “tax immunity to the tune of about $100 million.” The shield remains in place.
Read: ‘The Court Was Deceived’: 35 Former Federal Judges Move to Reopen Trump’s IRS Settlement
The same settlement created a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” — a proposed taxpayer payout to people claiming wrongful prosecution by past administrations — that drew immediate bipartisan condemnation. Critics labelled it a slush fund that could compensate violent January 6 rioters; Blanche refused to rule that out publicly.
Under sustained pressure from Republican senators as well as Democrats, he told a House Appropriations panel, “We’re not moving forward with the fund. Period.” When Rep. Grace Meng pressed him to put that commitment in writing, he refused.
The Epstein files
Then there are the Epstein files.
In a closed-door, transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee on May 29, former AG Bondi testified that she “did not lead every aspect of this effort or conduct that document review myself,” adding that she “delegated oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.”
The 111-page transcript was released on June 4 — one day after Trump publicly announced his intention to nominate Blanche. Bondi later posted on X that she had “praised” his management and called his ethics “beyond reproach,” but the transcript constitutes the primary record of her sworn account.
The rollout of the files has drawn criticism across party lines. The DOJ has withheld roughly 2.5 million pages of investigative material. Published documents carry heavy redactions, and redaction errors exposed the identities of Epstein survivors.
Hours after becoming acting AG on April 2, Blanche declared it was time to move on, saying the Epstein files “should not be a part of anything going forward” — a remark Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi cited in a formal letter demanding answers. At a Senate hearing in May, Blanche acknowledged the DOJ had “failed” in protecting victim privacy but did not apologize.
In July last year, Blanche himself conducted a nine-hour, two-day interview with Ghislaine Maxwell at a federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida — a step former prosecutors described as highly unusual and potentially unprecedented for a senior DOJ official.
Shortly after the interview, the Bureau of Prisons transferred Maxwell to a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas. Bondi told lawmakers she had “nothing to do with” the transfer.
Read: Ghislaine Maxwell Transferred to Minimum-Security Prison After Justice Department Interview
A coalition of Epstein survivors then disputed Blanche’s suggestion that the DOJ had engaged with victims, stating publicly that “acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has not met with any of us.”
Democrats have seized on Bondi’s testimony to argue that Blanche must testify before the Senate about his handling of the files before any confirmation vote proceeds.
What the Senate faces
The Constitutional Accountability Center, urging the Senate to block the nomination, argued that “Trump spent his first term searching for someone willing to turn the DOJ into a personal weapon, asking repeatedly, ‘Where’s my Roy Cohn?’ In Todd Blanche, he has found his answer.”
Confirmation requires a simple majority in the 100-seat chamber. Republicans hold 53 seats, but Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), John Cornyn (R-TX), and John Kennedy (R-LA) — all members of the Judiciary Committee — have voiced opposition or skepticism. If two Republican committee members join unified Democratic opposition, the nomination stalls before a floor vote.
Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune hedged, saying confirmation was “hard to say.” Grassley (R-IA) offered the lone enthusiastic endorsement, calling Blanche “well-qualified.”
Democrats are unanimously opposed. Senate Republicans previously opposed one of Trump’s AG nominees — Matt Gaetz — earlier this term, causing the former Senator to withdraw. Whether they back or reject Blanche may hinge on how Judiciary Committee holdouts weigh the anti-weaponization fund’s political fallout and the Epstein files liability heading into the 2026 midterms.
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