Todd Blanche should not be confirmed as attorney general

Opinion>Opinions - Criminal Justice The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill Todd Blanche should not be confirmed as attorney general Comments: by James D. Zirin, opinion contributor - 06/23/26 8:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied by James D. Zirin, opinion contributor - 06/23/26 8:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied

Title: Trump Blanche Image ID: 26166718803689 Article: Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, listens as reporters ask questions during his meeting with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, June 15, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

It is unlikely that President Trump’s nomination of his personal criminal lawyer Todd Blanche to become the 96th attorney general of the United States will fail confirmation. And that is unfortunate, because Blanche represents a travesty of equal justice under law.

The Republicans have a 53 to 47 Senate majority. Senators, especially those of a president’s party, tend to believe that presidents are entitled to select their own Cabinet members.

Only four presidential cabinet nominees have failed confirmation in our history — although presidents have been forced to withdraw nominations from time to time in the face of an indicated Senate hostility to the nominee. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for example, withdrew as Trump’s pick for attorney general in November 2024 following Senate scrutiny over his involvement in a sex trafficking investigation.

Blanche is dangerous. Elevated to acting attorney general in April when Trump fired Pam Bondi, he takes a jaundiced view of where his loyalties lie. He is in the tank for Trump. His undivided loyalty is to Trump, not to the Constitution. He has selectively and vindictively targeted Trump’s political enemies, something reserved for countries ruled by dictators.

Blanche is an inept manager, transforming the Justice Department from a meritocracy into an ethical dunghill. He has replaced seasoned lawyers with inexperienced loyalists after hundreds of career prosecutors departed, either in disgust or after being purged because they had participated in cases against Trump.

Plagued by the lack of experienced prosecutors and infected by politicized charging decisions that went nowhere, the Justice Department has lost sight of its core mission to see that justice is done.

The darling of the nursery is the first indictment of former FBI director James Comey. After the experienced prosecutor overseeing the case was sacked for refusing to indict Comey, Trump, with Blanche’s blessing, put Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer, in charge of the Virginia U.S. attorney’s office.

On her fourth day on the job, Halligan, who had never presented a case to a grand jury, appeared before the panel. A few days later, she was hauled into court. Questioned by the judge, she acknowledged a rookie mistake: She had never shown the full grand jury the final version of the indictment that it had approved. The indictment was dismissed.

Then there is Blanche’s laughable second indictment of Comey, for allegedly threatening Trump’s life with a social media posting of a photograph of seashells spelling out the numbers “86 47.” This probably won’t make it to a jury, much less the dark science of numerology.

Another failed case Blanche brought against Trump’s foes was the one against New York’s Attorney General Letitia James (D), for mortgage fraud. The judge tossed the indictment. When the Justice Department tried to re-indict James, two separate grand juries didn’t buy the government’s charges.

Then there are the six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video reminding military and intelligence personnel of their obligation to disobey illegal orders. Those charges were also dismissed.

Blanche eventually dropped his absurd effort to indict former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for the curious crime of facing Trump down on interest rates.

The investigation of Democratic presidential hopeful California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his family intensified when Trump said he planned to nominate Blanche as attorney general.

Under Blanche’s leadership, the Justice Department can’t seem to get indictments. In Chicago, a judge cited a remarkable list of grand jury errors and dismissed an indictment against four Democratic activists about to stand trial for impeding the police during a protest at an immigration detention facility.

In Wyoming, a panel of three federal judges threw out nine indictments — some charging murder — after grand jury proceedings revealed misconduct by Darin Smith, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who works under Blanche.

Blanche’s professional ethics smack of Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn. Senate Republicans bridled at the phony settlement Trump made with himself, setting up a $1.8 billion fund to pay off pardoned Jan. 6 criminals. Blanche defended the fund, musing obtusely on CNN , “Just to be clear, people who hurt police get money all the time, okay?”

Tell me about it.

Though senators blessed the general release Blanche gave Trump, worth $600 million to him and his family, they wanted no part of the Blanche-backed $1.8 billion slush fund, causing Trump to cancel it.

Thirty-five former federal judges filed an amicus brief in a Florida court contending that Blanche’s failure to disclose the conflict-of-interest settlement agreement and appended tax release was a “fraud on the court.”

Questioned by Congress, Bondi blamed Blanche for the drip-feed disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein files where 2.5 million pages of documents are yet to be produced, and those produced are enshrouded with wholesale and inexplicable redactions.

And Blanche publicly declared a “war” on judges who ruled against the Trump administration, a statement earning him howls of execration from the New York State Bar Association.

Past attorneys general have been lawyers of stature who pledged their overarching loyalty to the Constitution and the American people to see that justice is done. Some went on to become distinguished justices of the Supreme Court.

But two attorneys general — Warren Harding‘s Harry Daugherty and Richard Nixon’s John Mitchell — were indicted after getting too close to the man who appointed them. May Blanche profit from their example.

James D. Zirin is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and a published legal analyst.