Geoff Bennett:
Tomorrow, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche returns before the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking confirmation to serve permanently as the nation’s top law enforcement official.
It’s his second confirmation hearing for a senior Justice Department role, but the first since overseeing a series of controversial decisions, including high-profile investigations and indictments, as well as the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files.
Our justice correspondent, Ali Rogin, looks at Blanche’s unlikely rise to the department’s top job.
Ali Rogin:
The president’s former lawyer…
Attorney General Todd Blanche:
I have stood next to and defended President Trump as partisan prosecutors and politicians abused our legal system.
Ali Rogin:
… now nominated to be the people’s lawyer full time after three months as acting attorney general, his path to get here improbable, growing up in a blue-collar Denver suburb, taking night classes at Brooklyn Law School while working as a paralegal, at one time, a registered Democrat who worked in the Southern District of New York’s Violent Crimes Division for eight years.
Mimi Rocah, Former Federal Prosecutor:
He was a great teammate, trial partner.
Ali Rogin:
Mimi Rocah was his colleague there.
Mimi Rocah:
He was a tenacious investigator. He liked to build cases, particularly cases involving drugs and guns and international narcotics and gangs and things like that.
Ali Rogin:
He then moved to private practice, representing Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in a mortgage fraud case. Then, following a call from Trump himself, Blanche left his white-collar firm to join Trump’s defense in the first ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president.
Financial Times reporter Joe Miller says, at the time, Blanche was not politically motivated.
Joe Miller, Financial Times:
Todd Blanche wasn’t just a Democrat. He was quite a committed Democrat. In fact, his children like to remind him that, on the day that Hillary Clinton lost, Todd Blanche even shed a tear. But he also knew that many of his friends in the white-collar bar had refused to work for Donald Trump and that Donald Trump was running out of options, so to speak.
Ali Rogin:
Trump was found guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records stemming from hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Blanche led team Trump’s outcry and later appealed the convictions.
Todd Blanche:
I very much believe that the jury should have found President Trump not guilty.
Ali Rogin:
He also represented Trump in the federal classified documents and election obstruction cases, both of which were ultimately dismissed.
Joe Miller:
Blanche started to take on more of the Trump mannerisms, going on long rants within the court, sometimes interrupting the judge, pushing in his briefs the boundaries of legal discourse.
Ali Rogin:
Days after the president’s 2024 election win, he announced Blanche’s nomination as deputy attorney general.
How has he evolved, in your estimation, since joining President Trump’s defense team?
Mimi Rocah:
I wouldn’t say it’s so much an evolution as what seems to be a transformation. What we were taught to value in the Southern District of New York was to do the right thing, to seek justice, to serve the public, not any particular person or president.
Ali Rogin:
Blanche defended Trump during his confirmation hearing. Some senators questioned whether he’d act independently of the president as deputy A.G.
Todd Blanche:
I don’t think that President Trump was going to ask me to do anything illegal or immoral. So I don’t…
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
But if he does, you would say no?
Todd Blanche:
I will follow the law, Senator, period.
Ali Rogin:
The Senate confirmed Blanche by a vote of 52 to 46.
Deputy A.G. Blanche became the face of the highly scrutinized review of files related to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Todd Blanche:
Today, we are producing more than three million pages.
Ali Rogin:
He oversaw their turbulent release after Congress passed bipartisan legislation calling for more transparency. Epstein survivors quickly realized many of their names, images, and other personal information were unredacted.
Danielle Bensky, Jeffrey Epstein Survivor:
You don’t expect to see your name, of course, right? And so as you’re scrolling to see your name, it just brings up — it really is a level of PTSD.
Ali Rogin:
And some members of Congress claimed the DOJ withheld some files in order to protect powerful people involved with Epstein. Blanche called the redaction failures horrible and inexcusable and maintains that three million still hidden files are duplicates irrelevant or covered by privilege.
Todd Blanche:
We are not sitting on a single piece of paper, nothing that should be released.
Ali Rogin:
Blanche also came under scrutiny when he interviewed Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, while she was serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison. Days later, Maxwell was transferred to a minimum security prison camp…
Kristen Welker, Moderator, “Meet the Press”: Did you have anything to do with it?
Ali Rogin:
… which Blanche later said he approved.
Todd Blanche:
There was a tremendous amount of scrutiny and publicity towards her. And the institution she was in, she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life.
Ali Rogin:
In April, Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, reportedly in part because he thought she was too slow to prosecute his political enemies.
As acting A.G., Blanche quickly changed the pace.
Todd Blanche:
Today, a grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of North Carolina returned an indictment against James Comey on two counts.
Ali Rogin:
Indicting former FBI Director James Comey for a photo he posted to Instagram a year earlier. Blanche also sped up the investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan over statements he made to Congress on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump.
Jonathan Fahey, Former Acting ICE Director:
He is extraordinarily qualified to do the job for a couple of reasons.
Ali Rogin:
Former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey, who served as acting ICE director in the first Trump administration, said Blanche’s history with Trump is actually a benefit.
Jonathan Fahey:
Being someone’s lawyer is a good history of working with someone and working effectively with someone. So I think in many ways that’s a positive. It certainly should be a negative.
Ali Rogin:
But Blanche faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where he will need to be confirmed. He got a preview when he answered questions about the now defunct anti-weaponization fund for people who allege they have been victims of a weaponized DOJ, including January 6 protesters.
Todd Blanche:
But I am the acting attorney general, so don’t say the president’s former personal lawyer will do something. The acting attorney general will do something.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD):
Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president’s personal attorney.
Ali Rogin:
Before his hearing, a group of 1,200 former DOJ employees signed a letter urging against his confirmation, citing his degradation of the DOJ’s apolitical career work force.
Blanche dismissed their concerns.
Todd Blanche:
I’m going to still work hard and still work with the Senate, Republicans or Democrats, that have any questions for me about the validity or whether I should be confirmed.
Ali Rogin:
Tomorrow, Blanche faces the Judiciary Committee, which lost one of its most influential members, Senator Lindsey Graham. Graham’s death means Blanche must secure the support of every committee Republican in order to proceed to a full Senate vote.
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Ali Rogin.
