Todd Blanche

Overview

Todd Blanche is the attorney general of the United States, a post he has held since being sworn in on August 10, 2026, after a 50-49 Senate confirmation vote — one of the narrowest ever for the office (Associated Press). Before that he was the Justice Department’s second-in-command, and before that the lead criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump, defending him in the 2024 New York hush-money trial that ended in a 34-count felony conviction (Associated Press). Blanche has been at the center of the administration’s two biggest Justice Department controversies of September 2026: the removal of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House press premises, and his own appearances on the midterm campaign trail — events critics say erase the traditional line between federal law enforcement and politics (Associated Press).

From paralegal to prosecutor to white-collar partner

Blanche is originally from the Denver suburbs, completed his undergraduate studies at American University in Washington, D.C., and attended Brooklyn Law School at night while working as a paralegal in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, graduating cum laude (Associated Press). He clerked for federal judges Denny Chin and Joseph Bianco, both now on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then served eight years as a federal prosecutor in the same Manhattan office where he had started as a paralegal — including two years as co-chief of its violent crimes unit, supervising about two dozen prosecutors on cases involving killings and kidnappings (Associated Press).

He left the prosecutor’s office in 2014 for the Manhattan office of WilmerHale, and in September 2017 moved to Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft as a partner in the White Collar Defense and Investigations practice (Associated Press). There he built a roster of Trump-orbit clients that foreshadowed his later career: he represented the president’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort — winning dismissal in 2019 of a New York mortgage-fraud case on double-jeopardy grounds — and represented former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s associate Igor Fruman, who pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law, as well as Trump legal and political adviser Boris Epshteyn (Reuters).

Trump’s lawyer: the hush-money trial and the federal cases

Blanche left Cadwalader in 2023 to represent Trump himself, telling colleagues he was resigning to take on the case — “I have been asked to represent Trump in the recently charged DA case, and after much thought/consideration, I have decided it is the best thing for me to do and an opportunity I should not pass up,” he wrote in an email announcing his departure (Associated Press). He joined Trump’s defense team just ahead of the April 2023 arraignment on the indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (Reuters).

In the trial, Blanche became the first attorney in history to defend a former U.S. president at a criminal trial — and felt the heat almost immediately. Justice Juan Merchan told him “Mr. Blanche, you’re losing all credibility” at a hearing over Trump’s alleged gag-order violations, and accused the defense of making baseless claims and filing frivolous motions in its unsuccessful campaign to delay the trial (Reuters). The jury convicted Trump on May 30, 2024, on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments tied to the 2016 election; at the heart of the charges were reimbursements to Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, falsely logged as “legal expenses” (Associated Press). After the verdict Blanche said on Fox News that he did not think Trump got a fair trial (Associated Press).

Blanche also represented Trump in the two cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith — the 2020 election-interference case in Washington and the Florida case over classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. In both, the Blanche-led defense ran a strategy centered on delaying the cases past the 2024 election; when Trump won, Smith moved to abandon them, citing the Justice Department’s longstanding policy that sitting presidents cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office (Associated Press). Ten days before Trump returned to office, Blanche sat alongside him at Mar-a-Lago, appearing by video as a Manhattan judge sentenced the president-elect to no punishment in the hush-money case (Associated Press).

Deputy attorney general — and a disputed second job

After Trump’s 2024 victory, the president-elect nominated Blanche to be deputy attorney general. The Senate confirmed him in March 2025 by 52-46 (USA Today). As deputy, Blanche was the department’s second-in-command, managing its day-to-day operations under Attorney General Pam Bondi, overseeing the release of government files on Jeffrey Epstein, and becoming one of the administration’s most visible television defenders (Associated Press).

In May 2025 he acquired a second, contested title. After Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden by email, the president named Blanche as her temporary replacement (NPR). The fired head of the U.S. Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, sued the administration, arguing that only the Librarian of Congress has the power to appoint and remove the Register of Copyrights and that the president has “no authority” to name a temporary replacement librarian — calling the attempt to install Blanche “unlawful and ineffective” and seeking an injunction barring him from exercising the office’s powers (NPR). The Library’s shakeup unfolded just as its Copyright Office published the third part of its report on copyright and AI (NPR).

The Maxwell interview

In July 2025, Blanche sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell over two days in Tallahassee, Florida — a highly unusual assignment for a deputy attorney general. Maxwell, the longtime partner of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was serving a 20-year prison term for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls (NPR). On August 22, 2025, the Justice Department released what it described as the complete transcript and audio recording — hundreds of redacted pages — which Blanche posted on social media, saying the material was shared “in the interest of transparency” (NPR).

In the interviews, Maxwell was asked about a range of figures who may have known Epstein, including Trump, who belonged to the same Palm Beach social circle as the financier. She told Blanche that Trump “was always very cordial and very kind to me,” that she never saw him in any “inappropriate setting,” and that she did not consider Trump and Epstein “close friends” — while also saying of former President Bill Clinton that the only time Epstein and Clinton spent time together was on Epstein’s plane (NPR). NPR noted that the meeting was widely read as part of a bid by Maxwell’s legal team for clemency, and that within days of the interview she was moved from a Florida federal prison to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas — a transfer officials did not explain (NPR). The transcript release came the same day the department shared a first wave of Epstein and Maxwell probe files with the House Oversight Committee, which had subpoenaed the records (NPR).

Acting AG, confirmation fight, and the September 2026 controversies

On April 2, 2026, Trump ousted Pam Bondi as attorney general following mounting frustration with her performance, including her handling of investigative files related to Epstein, and said deputy Blanche would lead the department in the interim (USA Today). In June Trump formally nominated Blanche for the permanent job; after a confirmation fight that exposed bipartisan concerns about the department’s direction, the Senate voted 50-49 early on August 8 to confirm him — opposed by all Democrats and by Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who cited the department’s politicization — and he was sworn in on August 10 at the White House, with the oath administered by federal appeals court judge Emil Bove, another former Trump lawyer, before a “clap in” from department employees at DOJ headquarters (Associated Press). The nomination had nearly been scuttled over bipartisan concern about Trump’s controversial settlement of his lawsuit against the IRS; it moved forward only after Blanche confirmed in writing, under Republican pressure, that the administration was rescinding plans to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they were wronged by the department (Associated Press). Blanche has said he feels no pressure to placate Trump and calls the president’s interest in Justice Department matters his “right” and “his duty” (Associated Press).

The department Blanche now leads has been hollowed out by resignations, firings and voluntary departures, is confronting mounting pushback from the courts, and — under his acting and confirmed tenure — has overseen investigations of numerous Trump foes, including former FBI Director James Comey, whom the department indicted in April for a second time since Trump returned to office (Associated Press).

September 2026 brought two overlapping storms. On September 18, Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House; six days later, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly issued a 14-day temporary restraining order restoring the outlets’ press passes (USA Today). Two days after that, CNN was blocked from boarding Air Force One for Trump’s September 26 trip to Neyland Stadium for the University of Texas–University of Tennessee football game, though the network had been scheduled for the rotating television pool that day. On September 27, Blanche defended both moves on ABC’s “This Week” with Martha Raddatz: “The White House routinely decides who can go on Air Force One,” he said, adding, “being in the White House is a privilege. It’s not a right.” He argued that “complete misinformation and the inaccuracy of one-sided news” from certain organizations could become “a national security issue” — without elaborating on what misinformation he meant or how CNN’s coverage threatened national security (USA Today).

The same month, the AP reported that Blanche was blurring traditional boundaries between politics and federal law enforcement with speeches at GOP political events — a September 9 midterm convention in Dallas and, a week later, an event in North Carolina for Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley — where he praised Trump and touted the administration’s tough-on-crime approach (Associated Press). Calling Trump “the greatest president of our generation,” Blanche told the North Carolina crowd that “more of your loved ones are safer than they were just two years ago” — while also veering into topics outside his portfolio, such as the stock market, inflation and wage growth (Associated Press). “It lends credence to the arguments that the Justice Department is hopelessly politicized,” said Richard Painter, a White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush (Associated Press). The watchdog group Public Citizen filed a complaint accusing Blanche of violating limits on political activity by government workers over his participation in a Long Island event alongside Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Trump-endorsed Republican challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul (Associated Press). Blanche has said he is not endorsing candidates: “I will always say yes to speak when the president of the United States asks me to,” he told the AP, adding that his Long Island appearance was “purely thanking cops, law enforcement, for doing their jobs” (Associated Press). The Justice Department says his appearances are made in his personal capacity, reviewed and cleared by ethics officials, with travel expenses reimbursed by Blanche — and notes that his predecessor Bondi rescinded the Biden-era restrictions on appointees’ political-event attendance (Associated Press).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not state Blanche’s date of birth: AP described him as 51 in April 2026, but no citable source verified the date itself, so it is not stated. It does not repeat journalist Katie Phang’s characterization of Blanche’s September 24, 2026 answer in her Epstein-files lawsuit as an “admission” that the department violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act — that account comes from Phang’s own channels and lower-tier commentary outlets, and no independent tier1 or tier2 verification was available at publication time, so nothing is asserted about it here. It does not resolve the slight discrepancy in his SDNY tenure (eight years per AP; “more than eight years” per USA Today). It makes no claim about his personal life beyond what the sources cover, and it takes no position on whether the foreign-language Epstein records at issue in the Phang litigation must be disclosed — that dispute is before the courts.