Todd Blanche was warned by a former insider to be careful what he wishes for as he prepares to face a Senate confirmation vote.
The acting attorney general is poised to become the most powerful lawyer on earth as the head of President Donald Trump's weaponized Department of Justice, wrote former Homeland Security staffer Miles Taylor for The i Paper, who served some cautionary advice about what to expect.
"If he loses, it will be a historic failure," Taylor wrote. "But if he wins, the job he’s fighting for is likely to destroy him. And the world will see how far Trump will go if he is unrestrained."
His tenure has already drawn scrutiny over the stalled Jeffrey Epstein investigation, which critics say was suspended under circumstances that shielded Trump and his allies. Blanche personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell before her transfer to more comfortable custody, oversaw a chaotic release of Epstein files that exposed survivors' identities while redacting alleged abusers' names, and is now facing a federal judge's order to hand over unredacted documents directly — a sign the court no longer trusts DOJ's representations.
"Blanche set fire to his reputation when he agreed to be Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney," Taylor wrote. "He was the man at the defence table in Manhattan when Trump became the first American president convicted of a felony. But this week is the ultimate showcase of how he might debase himself in an effort to protect his employer."
During confirmation proceedings, Blanche submitted over 400 pages of written answers, more than 160 of which declined to respond on grounds it would be "inappropriate." He would not commit in writing to rejecting future slush funds for Trump allies or sweetheart deals for the president — a refusal two Republican holdouts have specifically flagged as disqualifying. More than 1,200 former Justice Department officials across administrations signed a letter opposing his confirmation, citing a "culture of fear" and constitutional failures, dwarfing the fewer than 80 signatures backing him.
"I worked with both of Trump’s former attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, and their teams during the first Trump administration, when I served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security," Taylor wrote. "Whatever criticisms people had of those men — and I had plenty — they generally pushed back on Trump’s anti-constitutional conduct."
Taylor described White House meetings where Trump ranted at length about settling scores with his enemies, money laundering and other illegal schemes, but he expressed doubt that Blanche would react as his predecessors had.
"After those meetings, these men would go back to their departments," Taylor wrote. "They’d confer with their teams. And after weighing Trump’s more egregious schemes, they’d conclude that it wasn’t worth going to prison for him."
Taylor warned that Blanche would become legally accountable for implementing Trump's most extreme future actions, with no institutional check left between the president and the machinery of government as there had been during his first term.
"It’s the highest-risk job on earth. And for what?" Taylor wrote. "Trump discards lawyers the way he discards wives and creditors. Michael Cohen went to prison for him. Rudy Giuliani was disbarred and bankrupted for him. His former chief lawyers, Sessions and Barr, looked at the train wreck and walked away while they still could."
