Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who President Donald Trump tapped Thursday toserve as the interim head of the Justice Department, managed the day-to-day operations of the department over the past year, often taking a more public-facing role when Pam Bondi was in hot water with White House officials.
Early in the administration, in fact, the White House told the now-former attorney general she could not appear on Fox News for a time amid fallout over the Justice Department’s handling of making parts of the documents related to Jeffrey Epstein public. Blanche appeared in her absence, helming the administration’s defense over the drawn-out Epstein debacle.
Pam Bondi was destined to fail. But she also made it worse
Blanche was Trump’s defense attorney across several criminal cases the then-former president faced following his first term in office, one of several members of Trump’s legal team given key DOJ or judiciary posts.
When Blanche took the deputy attorney general position, his experience as a former prosecutor and as a lawyer at a large law firm in New York was seen by career officials as an encouraging sign that the department’s institutional norms would be protected, something that did not bear out.
Swaths of DOJ and FBI officials who worked on January 6 or Trump-related cases have been removed, attempts have been made to prosecute the presiden’ts political enemies, and the cloud of the Epstein files continues to hang over the department.
As deputy attorney general, and while he has served in parrying attacks related to Epstein and beyond, Blanche faced blistering criticism afterhis interview last yearwith Epstein’s co-conspirator and business partner Ghislaine Maxwell.
Takeaways from the Ghislaine Maxwell-Justice Department interview
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her role trafficking girls for Epstein, was upgraded to a minimum-security prison camp. In December, Blanche said the Bureau of Prisons made the decision to move Maxwell, adding that “she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life.”
Blanche also came under criticism because he hadn’t asked about documents congressional Democrats had subpoenaed from the Epstein estate.
“When I interviewed Maxwell, law enforcement didn’t have the materials Epstein’s estate hid for years and only just provided to Congress,” Blanche said in a post on X, responding to Trump critic George Conway.
Thursday, Blanche on Fox News said Epstein didn’t have anything to do with Bondi’s removal and also sought to bat down conspiracy theories around Epstein – including the idea that he was a spy – marking his continued desire to move past the issue.
“I think that to the extent that the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche said.
“I’m not sure you totally get what people feel about that,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said later on Blanche’s responses to Epstein-related questions.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, Blanche boasted about what he saw as one major success of the past year:ousting political enemiesfrom the department.
