Will Trump's former defense lawyer protect the Justice Department from Trump?
DOJ officials say Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor, knows its tradition of blocking politicians from influencing criminal investigations, but he faces a daunting task.
WASHINGTON — When Matt Gaetz abruptly withdrew as President-elect Donald Trump’s candidate for attorney general on Thursday, many career attorneys in the Justice Department breathed a sigh of relief.
Hours later, though, Trump nominated former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a longtime loyalist who backed the former president’s lies about the 2020 election and said “horrible” people in the department were trying to make names for themselves by “going after Donald Trump and weaponizing our legal system.”
Justice Department attorneys now hope that Trump’s pick for the critical No. 2 position at the department — Todd Blanche, the president-elect’s defense lawyer — can help protect the department’s career civil servants from Trump’s wrath.
If confirmed as deputy attorney general by the Senate, which is widely expected, Blanche will no longer serve as Trump’s defense lawyer. He will then, like all DOJ officials, take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and be required to adhere to the department’s conflict of interest rules.
People close to Blanche say his past work as a career federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York gives him an understanding of the department’s tradition of barring presidents and politicians from influencing individual criminal investigations.
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