In his first public appearance as acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche insisted the Justice Department was not focused on going after President Donald Trump's political enemies.
"What we've been doing is changing the department," Blanche said, claiming instead it was the previous administration that had weaponized the Justice Department by prosecuting Trump, Blanche's former client.
Blanche was named to the job after Trump fired Pam Bondi last week, in part over his frustrations that she had not had more success in prosecuting his political enemies, NBC News reported. Blanche may face the same issues; the efforts have been blocked by courts and a grand jury that has refused a case.
Blanche said he had read the stories about why Bondi lost her job but sidestepped questions over whether he was worried he'd meet the same fate.
"Nobody has any idea why the attorney general is no longer the attorney general and I'm the acting attorney general, except for President Trump," Blanche said.
Blanche also said that he would never talk about any communications he'd had with Trump.
"I don't operate every day trying to second-guess what President Trump or anybody else is thinking," he said. "President Trump's decision for making the decision he did are his own, and nobody else's."
Blanche was the deputy attorney general, overseeing the department's day-to-day operations. Before that, Blanche was Trump's personal attorney, helping the president survive multiple criminal cases between his terms in office, defending him from prosecutors and appearing by his side during his conviction in New York in a hush money case. The president has said he did nothing wrong.
Blanche had of late been taking on more of a public-facing role, including at a Justice Department news conference and with appearances on right-wing podcasts. He also recently appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where he told the crowd that no one who worked on the investigations into Trump — more than 200 people in all, he said — was left at the FBI or the Justice Department.
On Tuesday, he said it was not about cleaning house.
"What we saw, and what President Trump went through, every single prosecutor in this department, you have a duty to do the right thing," Blanche said. "You have prosecutors who are absolutely not doing the right thing. ... What happened the last four years is something that will never happen again."
On Tuesday, Blanche announced the department would focus on fraud, creating a new unit to help deal with the "fraud crisis," as he put it, saying the DOJ would focus on health care, tax benefits, and corporate fraud. He named Colin McDonald as leader of a new "national fraud enforcement division," a new unit that will "zealously investigate and prosecute those who steal taxpayer dollars and rip off the American people."
"Fraud" is something of a Trump administration buzzword. The president increasingly claims "fraud" as a justification for including efforts to crack down on immigration, especially in Minneapolis. Those claims were based largely off a video from a right-wing YouTuber that was largely debunked. The Justice Department had successfully prosecuted fraud cases in Minnesota, led by a former career federal prosecutor who left amid concerns about the investigation into the shooting of an American citizen.
After more than a decade at the Justice Department, Blanche became a criminal defense attorney and eventually left his firm to represent Trump, then the former president, who was facing three different criminal cases in three different courts. Blanche’s aggressive and highly litigious approach helped draw the cases out, which worked to his client’s benefit after Trump was re-elected.
Blanche was Trump’s lead attorney when he stood trial in 2024 on charges of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment. The seven-week trial ended with Trump convicted on all 34 counts, but Trump was spared any penalty after he won the election. He is appealing the conviction with a different attorney.
Blanche also represented Trump in two federal criminal cases. One was in Florida, where he was being prosecuted on charges that he improperly kept classified documents after he left the White House and then lied to investigators about it.
That case was eventually dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who found that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was illegal.
Blanche has come under criticism from some on the right, including after the departure of Ed Martin from the "weaponization working group" earlier this year. Asked by NBC News on Tuesday where the "weaponization working group" stood, Blanche said that the group's work "has been ongoing for 14 months now" and said he expected the public would see a written work product soon.
The Justice Department has recently stepped up its probe into former CIA Director John Brennan, NBC News reported last month, and it is also weighing an investigation against former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson over her testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, based on a referral from House Republicans, according to a person familiar with the matter.
