Todd Blanche takes over the Justice Department, where there’s no escaping the Epstein files shadow
By Holmes Lybrand, Evan Perez, Katelyn Polantz, Kara Scannell, CNN
(CNN) — Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who President Donald Trump tapped Thursday to serve as the interim head of the Justice Department, managed the day-to-day operations of the department over the past year, often taking a more public-facing role when Pam Bondi was in hot water with White House officials.
Early in the administration, in fact, the White House told the now-former attorney general she could not appear on Fox News for a time amid fallout over the Justice Department’s handling of making parts of the documents related to Jeffrey Epstein public. Blanche appeared in her absence, helming the administration’s defense over the drawn-out Epstein debacle.
Blanche was Trump’s defense attorney across several criminal cases the then-former president faced following his first term in office, one of several members of Trump’s legal team given key DOJ or judiciary posts.
When Blanche took the deputy attorney general position, his experience as a former prosecutor and as a lawyer at a large law firm in New York was seen by career officials as an encouraging sign that the department’s institutional norms would be protected, something that did not bear out.
Swaths of DOJ and FBI officials who worked on January 6 or Trump-related cases have been removed, attempts have been made to prosecute the presiden’ts political enemies, and the cloud of the Epstein files continues to hang over the department.
As deputy attorney general, and while he has served in parrying attacks related to Epstein and beyond, Blanche faced blistering criticism after his interview last year with Epstein’s co-conspirator and business partner Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her role trafficking girls for Epstein, was upgraded to a minimum-security prison camp. In December, Blanche said the Bureau of Prisons made the decision to move Maxwell, adding that “she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life.”
Blanche also came under criticism because he hadn’t asked about documents congressional Democrats had subpoenaed from the Epstein estate.
“When I interviewed Maxwell, law enforcement didn’t have the materials Epstein’s estate hid for years and only just provided to Congress,” Blanche said in a post on X, responding to Trump critic George Conway.
Thursday, Blanche on Fox News said Epstein didn’t have anything to do with Bondi’s removal and also sought to bat down conspiracy theories around Epstein – including the idea that he was a spy – marking his continued desire to move past the issue.
“I think that to the extent that the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche said.
“I’m not sure you totally get what people feel about that,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said later on Blanche’s responses to Epstein-related questions.
Fighting Trump’s perceived political enemies
At the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, Blanche boasted about what he saw as one major success of the past year: ousting political enemies from the department.
Every DOJ employee – including FBI agents – who worked on investigations or cases around Trump following his first term had been fired, resigned, or took early retirement, Blanche said, adding that the number amounted to “over 200” people.
“There is not a single man or woman at the Department of Justice who had anything to do with those prosecutions,” Blanche said.
Blanche’s continued work as Trump’s personal attorney also translated into adopting some of the language of the president’s MAGA allies and publicly clashing with Trump critics.
Blanche defended Bondi after she was fired Thursday.
“As President Trump said today, the attorney general made our country safe again,” Blanche said on Fox News, hours after the announcement. “And she is a friend, and she did a great job in the first year of this administration.”
The new head of the Justice Department said he understood the frustration and desire to go after Trump’s political enemies when pressed on the issue and the failure to prosecute those individuals. Blanche noted that he was Trump’s defense attorney in multiple criminal cases following Trump’s first term.
“I had a firsthand accounting of what happened,” Blanche said. “Yes, I understand it. The American people understand it, and I know that the American people expect that it will never happen again, and we take that seriously.”
Blanche in meetings flashes a dry sense of humor but is also known to quickly lash out in anger when his frustrations boil over, associates say. At the Justice Department, he often led meetings, even those that the attorney general was supposed to be in charge of, an indication that he wielded the day-to-day power at the department.
Trump is considering replacing Bondi with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, according to sources, though others may also be on the short list. The former congressman could face harsh probing from senators over his very limited legal experience as well as his defense of Trump during his first impeachment hearings in late 2019.
In the trenches with Trump
Blanche was one of Trump’s lawyers for the New York hush-money case as well as the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith over Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified material after leaving office.
He is the only administration official who sat beside and guided Trump while his freedom was on the line during the criminal trial involving hush money payments in New York. While Trump was convicted, Blanche’s legal maneuvering resulted in Trump’s sentencing being postponed until after the election, all but ensuring that Trump would avoid serving any prison time.
The Trump defense team also won at the Supreme Court expanded protections from criminal prosecution for the president, in the January 6 case, just before Trump retook the presidency. He and his team also convinced a Trump-appointed judge in Florida to throw out the classified documents charges.
More recently, the Justice Department supported the same judge, Aileen Cannon, burying part of the special counsel’s final report on that investigation into Trump and others.
Beyond Epstein, Blanche has also faced criticism over public comments he made regarding the wrongfully deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, comments that led to Blanche nearly having to testify about his oversight of the case in Tennessee against Abrego Garcia.
During his confirmation hearing last year for deputy attorney general, Blanche declined to say if he would recuse himself from Justice Department efforts to re-examine the prior work of federal prosecutors on the Trump cases – cases in which Blanche represented Trump.
Blanche responded to questions about conflicts of interest by saying he would not violate his ethical obligations.
Previous Justice Departments attempted to maintain distance from political winds and the president’s direct wishes, and recusals were common when a department lawyer had previously been on the defense side of an investigation. That wall was most evident when former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation around Trump’s 2016 political campaign.
Yet Blanche has continued to attack the prosecutions of Trump, now from inside the Department.
“Jack Smith is a proven liar, consistent with these fake accusations from his failed vendetta against the President,” Blanche wrote on social media last week regarding the former Justice Department special counsel who had secured two indictments against Trump in 2023. Both were dismissed before trial.
“There is absolutely zero proof of wrongdoing,” Blanche added, echoing the same position he had taken in court while opposite the Justice Department.
The-CNN-Wire
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