Why Todd Blanche Should Not Be Attorney General

Photo illustration by Cristiana Couceiro; Source photographs from Getty Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story Shortly before midnight on April 27th, two days after a gunman disrupted the White House Correspondents’ dinner, the acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, submitted an extraordinary petition to a federal court that had blocked the construction of the White House ballroom. Despite the late-night filing in the case, which had been brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, there was no actual emergency; rather, the Department of Justice seized on the moment to make its case that security required the construction to proceed. Attorneys General do not ordinarily put their names on such filings, as Blanche had. But more astonishing was the language of the document: the United States speaking in the unmistakable voice of Donald Trump.

The motion began mid-rant: “ ‘The National Trust for Historic Preservation’ is a beautiful name, but even their name is FAKE.” It said that those seeking to stop the ballroom “suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome” and “are represented by the lawyer for Barack Hussein Obama, Gregory Craig.” Then it shifted to praising Trump’s brilliance—“a highly successful real estate developer, who has abilities that others don’t”—and to arguing that the ballroom was “being given FREE OF CHARGE AS A GIFT TO THE COUNTRY!” This claim was dubious; the President has unsuccessfully sought a billion dollars in government funding. Yet it was also unfiltered Trump, a Truth Social post in the guise of a legal document, and it was met with predictable failure. But although the document was submitted to Richard Leon, the U.S. district judge who had issued the injunction, Blanche was targeting a different audience of one.

In Trump’s Washington, subservience works. Last Monday, the President formally nominated Blanche to be the nation’s eighty-eighth Attorney General. Blanche, who had represented Trump in his criminal trials and was confirmed as Deputy Attorney General last March, has served in an acting capacity for more than eight weeks, since Pam Bondi was fired. He professed equanimity about getting the job permanently, announcing that, if Trump “chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’ ” But Blanche used the intervening weeks to engage in what has looked like a manic spree of auditioning for the top job.