Todd Blanche walked into a Senate judiciary committee hearing Wednesday as one of Donald Trump's most pivotal operatives, seeking confirmation as attorney general. His path to the nation's top law enforcement job has been anything but conventional.
Less than five years ago, Blanche was a registered Democrat and partner at the law firm Cadwalader. He abandoned that life in 2023 to defend Trump in criminal cases, a gamble that paid off with a deputy attorney general appointment at the start of Trump's second term. When Trump fired Pam Bondi as attorney general in April, Blanche stepped into the acting role and accelerated the administration's retribution agenda.
Democrats are prepared to hammer Blanche over his tenure reshaping the Justice Department. Thousands of career prosecutors were fired, many for their involvement in Trump-related investigations. The department has pursued cases that range from the peculiar to the politically motivated: indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center on contested charges and filing criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey over a beach sign displaying "86 47" that Democrats say was shorthand for removing Trump.
"In less than 18 months at the Department of Justice, you have shown you are first and foremost, still President Trump's personal attorney," said Dick Durbin, the ranking Democratic member of the committee, in his opening statement. "This nation deserves an Attorney General who loves the Constitution more than he loves the President."
Government lawyers under Blanche have faced accusations of misrepresentations before judges, eroding the longstanding "presumption of regularity" that courts have traditionally granted to federal prosecutors. Blanche also green-lit an arrangement with Trump over a $10 billion tax return leak lawsuit that would have created a $1.8 billion compensation fund and granted the president and his businesses immunity from audits. A federal judge on Monday sharply criticized the deal as collusive and engineered to benefit Trump. Blanche ultimately scrapped the fund under bipartisan pressure.
The handling of Jeffrey Epstein files looms as another flashpoint. The Justice Department released millions of documents beginning last year, but redactions were so sloppy that victim names were publicly exposed while names associated with Epstein remained hidden. Bondi testified in May that Blanche was "in charge" of the release effort.
Epstein survivors have mobilized against Blanche's confirmation. Annie Farmer, an abuse survivor, said in an interview last month that Blanche "should not become attorney general" and criticized him for failing to take accountability for the redaction errors and for being unclear about investigating leads in the files.
Questions will also swirl around Blanche's meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime companion, in prison last year. Shortly after, Maxwell was transferred from a low-security federal facility in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas, a move experts called "unprecedented" for a convicted sex trafficker. When asked during a Senate hearing whether he would commit to not recommending a pardon for Maxwell, Blanche said yes.
Senators are expected to press Blanche on his role in vacating serious January 6 convictions and on his oversight of a department where the traditional deference courts extend to prosecutors has crumbled. More than 1,200 former Justice Department employees signed a letter this month opposing his confirmation, warning that his "guiding star is fealty to the president, not the constitution."
Author James Rodriguez: "Blanche's hearing will test whether the Senate still believes the Justice Department should be independent from presidential vendettas."
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