Todd Blanche

As Trump’s defense counsel in Trump v. United States, Blanche co-authored a Supreme Court brief arguing that a former president is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for all of his official acts unless he was impeached and convicted under the Impeachment Clause. The Supreme Court’s final opinion held that a former president is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority and to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all of his official acts.

While serving as deputy attorney general, Blanche oversaw the release of the Epstein files following the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. While the act directed the Justice Department to release these files by December 19, 2025, the DOJ only partially released the files by December 2025, with some documents even including the unredacted names of victims. Blanche noted there would be no more major Epstein document releases after another tranche was released in January 2026.

Victims and critics have argued that the department has mishandled the release. In March 2026, a group of victims filed a class action lawsuit, alleging that the department failed to protect the victims’ privacy while releasing the files. Blanche subsequently admitted that the department committed errors in the release process, while adding that the improperly released information constituted only a small portion of the files. In April 2026, a journalist filed a lawsuit against Blanche, alleging that the department withheld or retracted key documents and failed to explain redactions as required by law. On April 23, 2026, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General announced an audit of  he department’s compliance with the act.

In December 2025, ProPublica reported after he became the deputy attorney general but before he divested his cryptocurrency holdings, Blanche issued a memo ending ongoing investigations into cryptocurrency businesses and reduced the department’s enforcement efforts against crypto-related fraud and money-laundering schemes. ProPublica estimated that Blanche’s crypto holdings were at least $159,000 at the time he issued the memo and withdrew the department’s crypto enforcement efforts. Six Senate Democrats sent a letter to Blanche, raising concerns about a potential violation of federal conflicts-of-interest statute.

Views on presidential influence over Justice Department investigations: When serving as acting attorney general, Blanche responded to a question about prosecuting Trump’s political opponents that it was the president’s “right” and “duty” to influence investigations into people whom “the president in the ​past has had issues with and believes should be investigated.”More recently, when asked about concerns around the politicization of the Department of Justice, Blanche responded that high-profile cases against Trump’s political opponents are only a minor part of the department’s larger volume of work and said Article II of the Constitution clearly grants the president the right to lead the country “in all areas,” including criminal justice.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was living in the United States when he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and then brought back to the United States under a court order in 2025. Before he was returned, the Department of Justice charged him with human smuggling. On May 22, 2026, the federal District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee dismissed the charges of human smuggling against Abrego Garcia, finding that the prosecution was vindictive retaliation against the defendant.

In dismissing the charges, the court found that there was significant proof that the investigation into Abrego Garcia was initiated in retaliatory response to a court ruling ordering his return. Among the proof cited by the court was Blanche’s interview on a cable news network, where he described the department’s investigation into Abrego Garcia as the following: “a judge in Maryland . . . questioned that decision [to deport Abrego Garcia] . . . [w]hen we started looking into it . . . [w]hat we found is that we were right. We were right. He is a criminal who should be deported.” The court proceeding also revealed internal Justice Department emails suggesting that Mr. Blanche’s office pressed for charges to be filed against Abrego Garcia.

On May 18, 2026, the Department of Justice, on behalf of the United States, entered into a settlement of President Trump’s suit against the Internal Revenue Service surrounding an IRS contractor’s unauthorized release of his tax returns in 2018. As part of the settlement, the government agreed to create an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” with $1.78 billion in funds. The government also agreed to be forever barred from pursuing claims or reviews against Trump based on his and his family’s past tax returns. Both documents were signed by Blanche.

During his testimony before Congress, Blanche described the purpose of the Anti-Weaponization Fund as addressing the flaws in “the legal system [that] was not set up to compensate for what the Democrats and what Biden and what Garland did for four years.”  He stated that he would appoint five commissioners to govern the fund, and that Trump would have the ability to remove the commissioners. As to the individuals eligible to pursue claims against the fund, Blanche stated that individuals who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and Trump’s political donors will not be excluded.

In March 2026, Blanche stated at the Conservative Political Action Conference that, after Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Kash Patel “cleaned house” at the agency, there “[wa]sn’t a single man or woman with a gun, federal agent, still in that organization that had anything to do with the prosecution of President Trump.” Following these remarks, former FBI agents filed a lawsuit, arguing that they were fired as part of a political retribution campaign.