Exclusive: Acting AG Todd Blanche was told last year to recuse from Justice Department matters involving Trump

By Katelyn Polantz, Evan Perez, Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — It was less than two weeks after Todd Blanche took on his role of deputy attorney general in March 2025 when the Justice Department’s top ethics lawyer delivered some straightforward yet inconvenient news: His recusal from legal cases that involved President Donald Trump in his personal capacity was necessary.

The official conducting the briefing, Joseph Tirrell, handed Blanche and his then-top deputy Emil Bove, who was also in the conference room, a printed PowerPoint presentation on ethics, according to a former senior Justice ethics official who described the meeting to CNN.

The meeting, which hasn’t previously been reported, is the first time Blanche was formally informed he would need to recuse himself from cases involving Trump. Around the same time, the department’s top career lawyer advised that Bove potentially had a conflict of interest by being involved in firings of DOJ lawyers.

Recusal, however, is a word that comes with treacherous consequences in the Trump era — including in the case of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions who Trump tormented after he recused himself from overseeing what eventually became the Mueller investigation. Blanche’s choice is either to oversee investigations the president cares deeply about but risk damaging their viability in court or to recuse himself and risk incurring the president’s wrath.

Now serving as acting attorney general, Blanche finds himself in an ethical quandary. His previous role representing Trump in criminal prosecutions brought by the Justice Department means that he is switching sides, overseeing the department’s investigation of the former government officials whom Trump claims unfairly used the criminal justice system to target him.

That includes some who were connected to the prosecutions of Trump for mishandling classified records in Florida after his first term, and allegedly conspiring to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Blanche was Trump’s primary defense lawyer in both federal court cases, which were dismissed prior to being fully resolved in court.

Blanche signed the department’s ethics pledge laid out to him by Tirrell, according to the former ethics official who spoke to CNN and a document submitted to the Office of Government Ethics. That pledge included requirements for Blanche to not participate for at least a year in any of the department’s matters involving past clients of the Blanche Law Group, the small private law firm Blanche used to represent Trump in the criminal cases. The department’s regulations also prohibit his participation “in any criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship” with anyone who was involved in or has an interest in that investigation or prosecution.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said Wednesday that Blanche is complying with ethical obligations.

“He is recused from many cases before DOJ. In any cases that are still ongoing where he previously represented someone, he is recused,” the spokeswoman said.

The department didn’t specify which cases Blanche is recused from, but this was the first time they’ve publicly acknowledged that he has recused from some investigations.

After publication, the Justice Department sent CNN an additional statement.

“To the extent DOJ is investigating something related to the President for which Todd was previously representing him, then hypothetically yes, he would recuse,” a spokeswoman for the Justice Department said.

That remains “a hypothetical,” the spokeswoman added.

The potential conflict is more acute now that Blanche has installed Joe diGenova, a former US attorney for DC, to reinvigorate an investigation into what diGenova has outlined as a broad conspiracy against Trump spanning from the 2017 Russian election interference probe to the aborted Special Counsel Jack Smith prosecutions that ended in 2024.

DiGenova is based in Fort Pierce, Florida, a federal court with few major criminal cases aside from Trump’s. Among those targeted for possible prosecution is John Brennan, the former CIA director — a top priority for Trump in his efforts to prosecute his political foes. Brennan denies wrongdoing. Last week, a spokesperson told CNN Blanche had not recused himself from the investigation into Brennan, which the department has repeatedly declined to comment on.

Inside the Justice Department, Blanche has delegated oversight of the so-called conspiracy investigation to top aides, people briefed on the matter said. He has not participated in meetings on the probe in recent months, according to people briefed on the matter.

The ethics memo

In early 2025, a top career lawyer at the department and an ethics expert, wrote a memo to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi raising concerns that Bove was overseeing the effort to purge Justice Department employees who were involved in Trump-related prosecutions, two people briefed on the matter told CNN.

A spokesperson for Bove didn’t immediately return a request for comment Thursday.

The memo, copied to the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Inspector General, noted that Bove had worked on investigations of January 6 Capitol riot defendants when he was a prosecutor in New York’s southern district. And so he shouldn’t be involved in the department’s so-called anti-weaponization plans, the memo said, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. The memo’s author was pushed out soon after it was delivered last year.

Despite the advice, Bove continued to oversee the Weaponization Working Group that Bondi set up upon taking office in an effort to undo Biden-era Justice Department efforts Trump deems unfair – including by rewriting the January 6 rioter prosecutions.

Bove left the department to become an appeals court judge last year.

Conflicts of interest aren’t uncommon within the Justice Department

It’s not known whether Blanche has asked for internal department guidance since his briefing with Tirrell, even though he said during his Senate confirmation hearing last year that he would follow the legal ethics guidance the department’s staff gave to him.

“It was typical in past administrations for senior officials to solicit advice,” especially when conflicts of interest were a close call, Benjamin Grimes, the former deputy director of DOJ’s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, said recently.

The conflicts of interest aren’t uncommon.

During the Biden administration, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco recused herself from investigations of President Joe Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, which didn’t result in charges, and an investigation of Hunter Biden. Monaco had served in the Biden transition team and during the Obama administration worked closely with the vice president. An internal memo recorded her recusal but wasn’t made public.

During the George W. Bush administration, Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation into the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. He cited his close political relationship with President Bush and other top administration officials who would be potential witnesses in the probe.

But the Justice Department during the second Trump term has broken with many past institutional norms, including the traditional separation between the White House and the department.

Grimes has concerns that Trump, Blanche’s former private client, would be his only superior who could evaluate and decide whether a conflict of interest between Trump personally and the Justice Department can be overcome.

“It’s a conflict that is insurmountable,” Grimes, now a Columbia Law School professor, said.

It’s also a problem, Grimes said, if Trump were to want information out of the Justice Department that would benefit him personally.

A thinning ethics firewall

Since that meeting last spring, the Trump administration has gutted both the department’s career ethics staff and its office of professional responsibility, and not replaced well-respected advisers for Justice Department headquarters who had over the years advised on some of the thorniest questions for leaders.

Tirrell, the ethics official who had briefed Blanche on recusal, was fired in July. He has since sued the Justice Department seeking compensation.

So were career employees within the department who worked in the Office of Professional Responsibility, including the director of a unit tasked with making sure DOJ attorneys didn’t cross ethical lines that could endanger their law licenses, several sources familiar with the department say.

Two weeks after the firing of Tirrell, Blanche took the unusual step of interviewing convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, a former partner of the late Jeffrey Epstein, while she serves time in prison. In that interview, Blanche asked Maxwell about her interactions with Trump many years before he became president, and she said Trump had done no wrong.

Ethics challenges continue to arise for Blanche and others in the administration, especially as their press conferences often highlight how federal law enforcement is carrying out Trump’s wishes, and even retribution.

In his first press conference as acting attorney general, Blanche notably remarked, “I love you, sir,” to Trump.

The possible consequences for Blanche, if he doesn’t recuse from investigations involving Trump personally, may be thin.

If criminal charges were to arise in the future related to the Trump cases or in matters where Trump could have a personal interest, defense attorneys could challenge those cases in trial-level courts arguing the prosecutions weren’t handled appropriately if Blanche played a decision-making role, some legal experts have told CNN.

But largely, the backstop falls on lawmakers, who can demand answers from Blanche now that he leads the department.

“Congress needs to take action if either Congress or the public find this to be untenable. And it is to me,” Grimes, the former Justice Department professional ethics adviser, told CNN this week.

This story was updated with additional information.

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