Almost exactly three years ago, Todd Blanche made a life-changing decision.
After serving for eight years as a respected federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, he was working as a partner at a prominent New York law firm when, in April 2023, he sent an email to his colleagues explaining that Donald Trump wanted to hire him as a criminal lawyer.
Blanche not only concluded that it was “an opportunity I should not pass up,” as he put it — he decided that he had to leave the firm and throw his lot in with Trump full time.
It was a risky move, but it appears to have paid off in ways Blanche could not have imagined. He is now the acting attorney general of the United States, with what appears to be an inside track to become the permanent one.
In the days since Attorney General Pam Bondi quietly departed in the wake of her firing, Blanche and his rivals for the top job each have raced to audition before the one person whose opinion matters — President Trump.
And as the man running the Department of Justice, Blanche has seemingly pulled nearly every lever of power at his disposal in an effort to please the president. In a matter of just three weeks, Blanche has made aggressive moves that seem designed to plant a permanent flag for the position he temporarily holds:
- Blanche has accelerated investigations tied to Trump grievances, bringing in a veteran former prosecutor, Joe DiGenova, to help lead the so-called grand conspiracy investigation based on the notion that a group of FBI, DOJ and intelligence officials secretly plotted criminal acts to destroy Trump.
- Blanche quickly began assuming a much higher profile than Bondi, sitting for interviews with reporters and answering a wide range of questions at televised news conferences, something Bondi did only sparingly.
- He has sought to make a splash with actions seemingly designed to please conservatives, including firing prosecutors who enforced a law designed to protect abortion clinics and announcing with great fanfare a controversial indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-extremist research group.
- Blanche has explicitly defended Trump’s unprecedented intervention in DOJ affairs, saying the president had a “right” and a “duty” to instruct the department to investigate specific alleged criminal matters. In fact, that breaks with a 50-year post-Watergate tradition designed to allow the Justice Department to make investigative decisions independently.
“Blanche knows Trump wants action in the cases Trump has publicly targeted,” said John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney in Virginia. “It is always a challenge to audition for a job for Trump, but Blanche is moving the chessboard at DOJ to try and get results that will satisfy the president.”
Auditions for top jobs happen in every administration, said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney from Alabama and an MS NOW legal contributor.
“What’s different here is the nature of the audition, in that it involves pandering to the president and to his personal agenda, instead of demonstrating your qualifications to do the job that the attorney general is entrusted with, which is being the people’s lawyer,” Vance said.
“Todd Blanche was brought up in the Justice Department and he understands how the Justice Department is supposed to work; he’s made some sort of a deal with himself that allows him to continue operating under the current conditions,” she added.
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney in Michigan and an MS NOW contributor, noted that Trump has “long sought his Roy Cohn,” referring to the prominent — and controversial — lawyer who worked with Trump early in his business career.
“Blanche seems eager to be that lawyer — a ruthless manipulator who will wield the law like a weapon to take down Trump’s enemies,” McQuade said. “Career ambition can be an ugly thing.”
A spokeswoman for Blanche declined to comment.
But Todd Blanche is not the only contender for attorney general who appears to be auditioning.
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Jeanine Pirro, currently the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., last week moved to dismiss seditious conspiracy charges against extremists who plotted to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It was a step Trump himself did not take when he declined to include them in his blanket pardon of J6 defendants — though he did commute their sentences.
And Harmeet Dhillon, the current head of the Civil Rights Division, recently sent a letter demanding election ballots from Detroit, consistent with Trump’s wish that the Justice Department probe alleged voter fraud.
The White House did not answer MS NOW’s questions about the decision making process but in a briefing last week, press secretary Karoline Leavitt referred to names being “floated in the press.”
“Sometimes I have a chuckle when I read some of the reports about certain people floated for certain jobs,” she told reporters.
“As far as the president is concerned, right now, Todd Blanche remains the acting attorney general. The president feels he’s doing a good job. And that’s where it remains right now.”
For his part, the president also gave Blanche a progress report recently, telling reporters he’s doing a “fantastic” job.
“I will say that he’s a great lawyer. I know that because he’s been with me a long time. And so far, he’s doing a great job,” Trump said.
Because Blanche was previously confirmed by the Senate — and was serving as the No. 2 at DOJ — he can remain as acting attorney general for 210 days, and as long as a nomination is pending before the Senate.
But in an environment in which it may be difficult to get any other contenders nominated, Blanche has a structural advantage over his rivals: He already has the job.
Jake Traylor contributed to this reporting.
Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for MS NOW.