Attorney General Todd Blanche is stepping outside the traditional norms of the Justice Department to become a top political attack dog for Republicans in the homestretch before the midterm elections.
Blanche, formerly President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, replaced Pam Bondi as acting attorney general in April of this past year after serving as her deputy for Trump’s first year back in office. He was confirmed and formally sworn into the permanent post in August and has quickly become the face of President Donald Trump’s tough-on-crime agenda.
Trumpworld insiders tell the Washington Examiner that Blanche’s rise comes as no surprise, viewing him as one of the strongest messengers for Trump’s agenda.
“We’ve got the lowest murder rate since 1900,” one veteran GOP operative, who works closely with Trump’s outside political operation, told the Washington Examiner. “Pam Bondi just sucked at messaging. In a Cabinet full of bad communicators, he’s one of the few good ones.”
They added that Blanche has never been camera-shy and wants the spotlight. “Why else would he have taken on Donald Trump as a client?” the source said, noting that the attorney general sat ringside at the Ryan Garcia-Connor Benn fight Saturday night in Las Vegas.
Another insider concurred, arguing that it’s not his fealty to the president that’s made him a mainstay on the campaign trail but his effectiveness.
“The thing with Todd isn’t that he’s this loyal foot soldier — he’s effective,” said one former senior Trump White House official. “Yes, he and President Trump have a close relationship, but it’s more than that. Ultimately, the president wants to be tough on crime, and Todd is delivering the goods. It makes sense that he’s going to be put out there to make sure voters know about it.”
A second former senior Trump White House official told the Washington Examiner that it’s a “no-brainer” that Blanche has been front and center on the campaign trail, specifically communicating Trump’s “record on crime directly to voters.”
But Blanche’s speaking portfolio has quickly surpassed the purview of a typical attorney general and is straying into overtly political territory, drawing concerns from presidential historians. In the past week alone, he held a solo press conference at the White House, delivered a primetime speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, and traveled to North Carolina to rally for Republican U.S. Senate nominee Michael Whatley.
In each appearance, Blanche touted the Trump administration’s crime crackdown, but three presidential historians told the Washington Examiner that Blanche’s “bold political behavior” follows in the footsteps of John Mitchell, former President Richard Nixon’s campaign chairman, who would later serve as attorney general and went on to be jailed for his role in the Watergate scandal.
Russell Riley, professor and cochair of the Presidential Oral History program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said that “it’s not as though there are not people who have had close and very personal relationships with presidents,” pointing to both Mitchell and Robert F. Kennedy Sr., who served as attorney general under his brother, former President John F. Kennedy.
“If you have a political person in the Agriculture Department, if you have a political person in the Labor Department, even if you have a political person in the Defense Department, it does not have the same gravity and the same consequences as it does if you have a highly political person in the Justice Department,” Riley said, “because it means that that there is forever the opportunity for the abuse of the law against the president’s political opponents and to advantage his political supporters.
“How can an attorney general go before a podium in the White House and offer political commentary, and at the same time assure the American people that politics does not and will not intrude on their decisions about the deployment of equal justice under law?” Riley said.
Allan Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University and author of the forthcoming Great American Presidents: The Twelve Who Transformed the Nation, agreed with sentiments voiced by former Trump White House officials and suggested that Blanche has been increasingly “out front” because “he has the president’s trust.”
Lichtman clarified that, in his view, Blanche is, “really, since the bad old days of Watergate, the most blatantly political attorney general we’ve had by a wide margin.”
“The more disturbing element of this, of course, is it’s another example of the breakdown between what should be an independent justice system and the political imperatives of the White House. If you merge the two, as we’re seeing happening here, you lose confidence in you know the supposedly blind justice of federal law enforcement,” he added, noting the “Freudian slip” during Blanche’s confirmation hearing where he referred to himself as “[Trump’s] lawyer” despite having worked at the Justice Department for over a year at that point.
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The White House declined to comment on this story.
A Justice Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that “Attorney General Blanche’s appearances at political events are made in his personal capacity.”
“His appearances are reviewed and cleared by the Department’s ethics officials. Travel expenses are reimbursed by the Attorney General in accordance with federal law, regulations, and policies,” that person wrote in a statement, noting that Blanche did not use DOJ statistics or verbiage, avoided discussing DOJ policies or official business, and did not engage in any political fundraising.