Donald Trump plans to install his former personal defense lawyer as the permanent head of the Justice Department as he ratchets up his campaign of vengeance against his political enemies.
“He’s acting attorney general,” the president said of Todd Blanche, who has served in that capacity since April, in remarks at the White House on Wednesday. “We are going to make him permanent attorney general.”
Blanche, who earned his legal degree at night school, represented Trump in all four of his major criminal cases before he won the 2024 presidential election.
Those proceedings included charges related to Trump making hush money payments to a pornstar he allegedly slept with while married, hiding federal classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and attempting to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
Trump appointed Blanche as deputy to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi after retaking the White House last January. He canned Bondi in April of this year over what insiders say was his fury over her mishandling of the release of the Epstein files and failed prosecutions of his political opponents.
Blanche had meanwhile worked hard to impress Trump. As deputy AG, he oversaw the removal of more than 200 career DOJ officials connected to prior investigations into the president and orchestrated the dismissal of corruption charges against scandal-plagued former New York Mayor Eric Adams, a move that briefly earned Adams’ support for Trump last year.
He also obtained controversial testimony from convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell last summer, denying she’d ever seen Trump do anything “inappropriate” during his friendship with the late pedophile and sex trafficker. Trump remained under intense scrutiny over that relationship at the time.
Blanche said after taking over from Bondi in April that he “did not ask for this job,” and has since insisted that his moves as acting AG have not amounted to auditioning for a permanent role. He has nevertheless made it clear he does not share whatever reservations his predecessor may have had about Trump’s retributive agenda.
Since taking charge at the DOJ, Blanche has pushed to revive Bondi’s abortive prosecutions of New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI chief James Comey. James previously sued Trump for fraud. Comey oversaw the bureau’s inquiries into Russian election meddling in Trump’s favor in 2016.
Blanche has also tapped Joseph diGenova, 81, a Reagan-era prosecutor, to run a probe based out of Florida examining whether intelligence and police officials spent the last 10 years scheming against the president.
He further spearheaded efforts to establish a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund within the DOJ widely criticized as a naked cash grab.
The White House said the fund would be used to compensate victims of what it claims was unjust prosecution under the Biden administration, but the Justice Department announced on Monday that the fund was being dropped.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Justice Department for comment on this story.
