President Donald Trump will nominate his acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, to be the country’s permanent top prosecutor Thursday, he said at a private event at the White House on Wednesday evening.
Dan Scavino, the White House deputy chief of staff, posted a video Wednesday night of Trump announcing Blanche’s nomination as he spoke in the Rose Garden.
“He’s acting attorney general,” Trump said in the video, referring to Blanche. “Tomorrow I’m instructing Dan and everybody else that’s involved in that very complicated process, which is going to be, I think, very quickly, that we are going to make him permanent attorney general.”
Scavino captioned the video “President Trump with an announcement tonight at the @WhiteHouse…Congratulations @TheJusticeDept@DAGToddBlanche.”
Blanche took over as acting attorney general in early April after Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose deputy Blanche had been. Since he took the position, Blanche has taken steps to demonstrate he would be an attorney general who is loyal to Trump, including trying to prosecute Trump’s enemies and rolling out a compensation fund for his allies.
Under Blanche’s leadership, the Justice Department secured an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey over a photo he posted of seashells that the Trump administration argues threatened Trump’s life. Comey has denied he was making any threat with his photo showing “86 47” in seashells.
The indictment in April is the second time the Trump administration has tried to prosecute Comey. The first indictment was based on allegations that he lied to Congress five years ago; a federal judge dismissed that case in November.
The judge ruled that case could not move forward, as well as a case against another Trump target, New York Attorney General Letitia James, because the federal prosecutor in the case had been “unlawfully appointed.”
NBC News reported that Bondi was fired in part over her lack of success going after Trump’s perceived political foes.
Blanche, a former federal prosecutor, entered the Trump administration after first having been his personal attorney. He represented Trump in his New York hush money case, which resulted in a conviction on 34 felony counts. Trump has denied the charges.
The administration’s proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate people who say they the federal government has targeted them raised bipartisan furor. The White House has backed off the proposal, with Blanche telling lawmakers Tuesday that it would not move forward with the fund.
Blanche’s nomination heads to the Senate, where he was confirmed as deputy attorney general last year on a 52-46 vote.
