Donald Trump said at a private dinner last Wednesday that Todd Blanche will be the next United States Attorney General, formally elevating the man who has been serving in the job on an acting basis for two months. The move ends Blanche’s stretch as acting attorney general and sends him toward a Senate confirmation fight that could turn on how much independence Republican senators still expect from the Justice Department’s top lawyer.
Blanche had already been acting attorney general for two months after Pam Bondi left the building, and Trump had previously relied on him as his personal attorney before putting him at the head of the department. Those ties are likely to matter in the confirmation process, because Blanche’s closeness to Trump may be an asset in the president’s orbit and a liability in front of senators who still treat independence as part of the job description.
Andrew Weissmann, who served as chief of the Fraud Section at the Justice Department from 2015 to 2019 and later as a lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s special counsel’s office from 2017 to 2019, said Blanche has brought an ethos of absolute fealty to Trump into his current role. Weissmann said Blanche was Bondi’s right hand and the principal person handling the Epstein files, and he described Blanche’s record at the department as one of serious missteps.
Weissmann pointed to the Justice Department’s announcement of a $2 billion settlement before it backed off after pushback, a move that drew scrutiny from a judge overseeing the case. The judge said she wanted to hear why the settlement was not fraud upon the court, an episode that could give senators another opening to press Blanche on how he has used the office and whether his loyalty has outweighed caution.
Weissmann drew a contrast with Bill Barr, saying he was extraordinarily smart and played chess, not checkers, and argued that Bondi had been willing to give Trump 92 percent of what he wanted. Blanche, he said, may be willing to go even further. “I don’t know if it’s 98, 99, or 100 percent,” Weissmann said. “There are two stories there. There’s a story about corruption, about what he’s willing to do, the complicity he is willing to engage in for the president.” For Blanche, the next phase is not whether Trump wants him in the job. It is whether enough Senate Republicans decide that a Justice Department run at 98 percent loyalty is still too much to confirm.
