On behalf of our hundreds of thousands of supporters and activists nationwide, People For the American Way opposes the nomination of Todd Blanche to be Attorney General of the United States.
What Blanche would do if confirmed is not a matter of conjecture. We already know, because he has been Deputy Attorney General since March 2025 and Acting Attorney General since April of this year. In that time, he has covered up wrongdoing in the Epstein scandal, given outlandish and corrupt favors to the president and his allies, and targeted the president’s political rivals and personal enemies.
The Attorney General is tasked with protecting the rule of law. But Blanche has used his position to advance the rule of one man: Donald Trump.
Blanche is everything that an Attorney General should not be. He should not be confirmed.
The Epstein Coverup
As Deputy and Acting Attorney General, Blanche has become inseparable from the Epstein scandal. During 2025, Blanche was among the senior administration officials who met in the Situation Room not to discuss a crisis threatening the American public, but to strategize over how to protect Donald Trump from public disclosure of incriminating material in the Epstein files.
In those meetings, Blanche proposed a deeply cynical scheme in which the administration would call for the release of grand jury files that could not legally be released, so the administration could then falsely appear to support openness and disclosure while attacking judges for following their legal duty to protect the secrecy of the grand jury documents.[i]
Blanche’s machinations were overtaken by the American people’s overwhelming demand for disclosure. In November 2025, over intense opposition from President Trump, Congress nearly unanimously voted to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, mandating the release of unclassified files within 30 days. Blanche had responsibility for ensuring administration compliance with the Act’s requirements.[ii]
Importantly, Congress made clear that no record could be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.[iii] Nevertheless, in February, media reports revealed that the Justice Department had unlawfully withheld multiple Epstein files containing allegations against the president.[iv]
In June, federal district judge Emmet Sullivan found that the Justice Department was “in violation of the Act.”[v] In response, Blanche informed the court that he would not release or redact any additional files, including at least one involving allegations against President Trump.[vi]
As a number of Epstein survivors stated upon announcing their opposition to Blanche’s nomination:
Blanche has consistently minimized legitimate concerns about how the files have been handled, including problematic redactions and the exposure of survivors’ personal information. Blanche failed to deliver transparency, and he has gravely failed survivors. This is failing upward, plain and simple.[vii]
The Slush Fund and Blanket Immunity
Blanche has been the prime mover in what may very well be the most breathtakingly corrupt self-enrichment scheme ever to involve a U.S. president: the $1.8 billion so-called “weaponization fund” and the accompanying tax audit immunity deal.
Both elements stemmed from an apparent fraud upon the court: Donald Trump’s lawsuit, lodged on his personal behalf, against the IRS for the leaking of his tax returns during his first term. He sought $10 billion in damages, an absurdly high amount vastly exceeding any possible damages. Because Trump has authority over the IRS as the president of the United States, serious questions arose as to whether the parties were at all adverse to each other, let alone sufficiently adverse for Article III standing under the Constitution.
In April, the court received a request to extend the time for the defendant to respond to the lawsuit. Tellingly, this request came not from the Justice Department, but from Trump’s lawyers.[viii]
The Justice Department could easily have shown that this lawsuit had no merit. Had the plaintiff been anyone else, that is what they presumably would have done. But in this case, Blanche reached a “settlement” with Trump. This “settlement” was transparently corrupt.
First, there was the notorious $1.8 billion so-called “weaponization” fund. With little public oversight, this would have allowed Blanche to dole out funds to anyone claiming that they had been victims of the “weaponization” of justice. In reality, it appeared to be a slush fund for insurrectionists and other Trump allies, including those who assaulted police officers on January 6, 2021.
After substantial pushback from members of Congress, some media stories reported that the plan had been shelved. Other reports make its status more ambiguous.
But importantly, it should not matter to senators if this corrupt scheme has been withdrawn, because Blanche vigorously pushed it in the first place. That, and not the abandonment under pressure, is what tells us whether he has the requisite character to be attorney general.
The same applies to the second part of the “settlement.” Blanche agreed to end a longtime audit of Trump’s taxes that could have required him to pay $100 million. In addition, he immunized Trump, his family, and his businesses from audits or any other kind of liability for any action they had taken as of the day of the settlement.[ix] This unprecedented favorable treatment of the president has nothing to do with the underlying lawsuit that Trump initiated. It is corruption, pure and simple.
Simply agreeing to this “settlement” taints Blanche and disqualifies him from high public office, even if he were to repudiate it under political pressure.
Ending DOJ Independence and Making It Trump’s Political Weapon
As former Attorney General Bondi’s second-in-command, Blanche facilitated her transformation of the Justice Department into a partisan tool of Donald Trump’s, ending its independence from the White House. When he became acting attorney general earlier this year, he had an opportunity to right the ship.
Instead, he has done the opposite.
Since Watergate, attorneys general have scrupulously kept decisions regarding criminal investigations and prosecutions insulated from White House pressure. This practice is designed to protect the American people from a Justice Department weaponized for political purposes. But Blanche not only allows the president to influence these decisions, he asserts that the president should influence those decisions.[x]
Under Blanche’s leadership, the Justice Department has filed an absurd and transparently political prosecution against former FBI Director James Comey. His alleged crime: taking a photograph of seashells at the beach, which Blanche’s prosecutors claim was a threat against the president’s life. What Comey actually did that enraged Trump was to investigate alleged collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Simply put, Trump wants revenge, and Blanche is willing to misuse the prosecutorial power of the Justice Department to give Trump his wish.
Under Blanche’s leadership, the Justice Department has launched a politically motivated prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center over its work to document and expose extremist groups that pose a threat to Americans’ lives and civil rights. This is a threat to civil rights and the American people across the board.
Just as illegitimate prosecutions of political opponents constitutes an assault against our freedom and the rule of law, so too do measures to exempt political allies from the law. For instance, under Blanche’s leadership, the Justice Department asked a court to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of 12 Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who had been involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.[xi] This went far beyond Trump’s previous commutations for these criminals, which had released them from prison while keeping their convictions in place. Blanche has made it clear that political violence in support of President Trump will not be punished under this administration.
Conclusion
This nomination does not involve conjecture about how a nominee might act if allowed to fill a certain position. There is no guesswork here. Blanche has shown the nation who he is. He has demonstrated what the Justice Department will be under his leadership.
Perhaps never before has so transparently unqualified an individual been nominated to be attorney general. The Senate has an obligation to reject his confirmation.
[i] “Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files,” The New York Times, June 10, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/magazine/trump-epstein-files-white-house-vance-doj.html.
[ii] “Todd Blanche was ‘in charge’ of Epstein matter, Bondi told lawmakers, according to new transcript,” CNN, June 4, 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/04/politics/pam-bondi-epstein-testimony-todd-blanche-transcript.
[iii] Epstein Files Transparency Act, Public Law 119–38, 39 Stat. 656, Section 2(b)(1).
[iv] “Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump,” National Public Radio, Feb. 24, 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/02/24/nx-s1-5723968/epstein-files-trump-accusation-maxwell; “Ranking Member Robert Garcia Statement After Department of Justice Withheld Epstein Files, Includes Allegation President Donald Trump Sexually Abused a Minor,” Statement of Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Feb. 24, 2026, https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/ranking-member-robert-garcia-statement-after-department-of-justice-withheld-epstein-files-includes-allegation-president-donald-trump-sexually-abused-a-minor.
[v] “Todd Blanche ‘conceded’ violating law on Epstein files, judge finds,” Politico, June 25, 2026, https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/25/todd-blanche-conceded-epstein-files-00977481.
[vi] “Justice Department defends decision not to release, unredact more Epstein files,” The Hill, July 3, 2026, https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5952687-justice-department-epstein-files-phang-suit/.
[vii] “Group of Epstein survivors announce opposition to Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination,” CNN, June 11, 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/11/politics/epstein-survivors-blanche-nomination.
[viii] “Trump asks for longer timeline in suit against I.R.S.,” The New York Times, April 17, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/business/economy/trump-irs-justice-lawsuit.html.
[ix] “Experts warn Trump immunity from IRS audit could undermine trust in tax system,” PBS Newshour, May 22, 2026, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/experts-warn-trump-immunity-from-irs-audit-could-undermine-trust-in-tax-system.
[x] “Blanche argues Trump can influence DOJ investigations, including those involving political foes,” Fox News, April 8, 2026, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/blanche-argues-trump-can-influence-doj-investigations-including-those-involving-political-foes.
[xi] “DOJ moves to dismiss Jan. 6 convictions against former Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, including seditious conspiracy charges,” CBS News, April 15, 2026, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doj-moves-dismiss-jan-6-convictions-proud-boys-oath-keepers-seditious-conspiracy/.