Todd Blanche to sit for confirmation hearing in bid for attorney general

Todd Blanche at the justice department in Washington DC on 11 June 2026. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters View image in fullscreen Todd Blanche at the justice department in Washington DC on 11 June 2026. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters Todd Blanche to sit for confirmation hearing in bid for attorney general Trump’s nominee will face tough questions over purging of career prosecutors, Epstein files and more Todd Blanche will appear in front of the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, as one of Donald Trump ’s most loyal and powerful enforcers in government aims to be confirmed as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Few officials have been more instrumental in Trump’s crusade to transform the federal government in his second term than Blanche. Trump tapped Blanche, his former personal attorney, to serve as the deputy attorney general, the justice department’s No 2 position, at the start of his term, where he steered the department’s day-to-day work as career employees were purged over their connection to Trump investigations and the president oriented the department towards punishing political rivals and investigating debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. After Trump fired Pam Bondi as attorney general in April, Blanche began serving as the acting attorney general, where he amped up Trump’s retribution agenda. Among other topics, Blanche is likely to face pointed questions from Democrats over those actions, which include firing career prosecutors for their work on anti-abortion cases, indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center on specious charges and filing criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey over a seashell display that said “86 47” – shorthand for “get rid of Trump” – on the beach. Blanche has overseen a department in which prosecutors and other government lawyers have been reprimanded for misrepresentations before judges. Government lawyers have long enjoyed a “presumption of regularity” – an assumption that officials are acting ethically and honestly before the court – but that seems to have evaporated. For Blanche, his nomination as attorney general represents the pinnacle of a decision less than five years ago to bet everything on Trump. A former federal prosecutor, Blanche left a partnership at the law firm Cadwalader in 2023 to represent Trump in the criminal cases against him. Blanche, who was a registered Democrat until fairly recently, was rewarded for his loyalty with a top post in the justice department. Blanche is also likely to face hard questions about the department’s decision to vacate some of the most serious convictions from January 6 as well as an arrangement the government reached with the president to end a $10bn lawsuit over the leak of his tax returns. The agreement, approved by Blanche, called for the creation of a $1.8bn slush fund to compensate the victims of alleged government weaponization and gave the president, his family and related business entities unprecedent