Trump Picks Loyalist Todd Blanche for Permanent Attorney General, Cementing His Grip on the Justice Department

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he intends to nominate acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to lead the Justice Department on a permanent basis, elevating one of his most trusted legal allies to the top law-enforcement job in the country. "We are going to make him permanent attorney general," Trump told reporters, ending weeks of speculation over who would run a department that has been at the center of his second-term agenda.

Blanche has served as acting attorney general since April, when Trump abruptly fired Pam Bondi after months of bipartisan backlash over the Justice Department's handling of files related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Bondi had also drawn the president's private frustration for failing to deliver the criminal cases he demanded against his political adversaries. Her removal capped one of the most turbulent stretches in the department's modern history.

The choice of Blanche is a striking one. A former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who later moved into private practice, Blanche became Trump's personal defense lawyer, representing him in the New York hush-money case that ended in a felony conviction in 2024. After joining the administration as deputy attorney general, he positioned himself as the favorite to replace Bondi by accelerating investigations into the president's foes and pressing an aggressive vision of executive power at the Justice Department.

Blanche's path to the job has not been free of controversy. In the weeks after Bondi's firing, he announced a nearly $1.8 billion fund intended to compensate Trump's allies for what the administration called politically motivated prosecutions during the Biden years. The proposal touched off a bipartisan firestorm in Congress, and the department quietly scrapped the idea earlier this week amid objections from Republican lawmakers who warned it amounted to using taxpayer money to reward the president's friends.

His nomination now heads to the Senate, where Republicans hold the majority but where Democrats have signaled they will fight the confirmation. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Judiciary Committee, called Blanche a "deeply embarrassing" pick and accused him of turning the Justice Department into an instrument of presidential retribution. Republicans countered that Blanche has the experience and the president's confidence to run the department, setting up a confirmation battle that is likely to stretch through the summer. If confirmed, Blanche would become the public face of a Justice Department that critics and supporters alike agree has been reshaped more dramatically in the past year than at any time in decades.