Todd Blanche is up for Senate confirmation next week. Trump nominated Blanche — current acting attorney general — to become our official attorney general, but there’s a major problem.
Blanche was Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney in the Stormy Daniels case, the classified documents case, and the election interference case. In two of those, he defended Trump against a suit from the Department of Justice. Now, he could end up leading the very same Department of Justice.
This is not the first conflict of interest popping up in an attorney general nomination. Presidents Harding and Nixon nominated their campaign managers for the role, and those men then oversaw corruption scandals involving those presidents. President Bush nominated his White House counsel to be AG, and that nominee ended up defending the federal government’s use of warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens.And of course, JFK nominated his brother for the AG position.
But nominating your own personal criminal defense attorney is a special kind of conflict, because if the president is charged with committing a crime, it seems unlikely that the person who’s criminally defending him is going to turn around and prosecute him.
The Todd Blanche confirmation hearings will take place on July 15th and July 16th. So you may want to call your senators and tell them how you want them to vote. Here’s the twist. Due to Mitch McConnell’s absence, there are 52 Republicans and 47 Democrats and independents. So it now only takes three Republicans to block a confirmation, not four.
Ben Sheehan is a political commentator and digital creator. He specializes in civics education, which is showcased in his latest book, What Does the Constitution Actually Say?: A Non-Boring Guide to How Our Democracy Is Supposed to Work. Check out his Substack, Politics Made Easy.
