By Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON, May 29 (Reuters) – Todd Blanche has moved quickly as acting U.S. attorney general to please the man whose face now adorns the exterior of the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters: President Donald Trump.
The Department of Justice under Blanche, who took over in early April after Trump fired his predecessor, Pam Bondi, secured criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, ramped up its investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and removed press releases about prosecutions of rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
But his audition for the permanent job as the nation’s top law enforcement official faces its biggest hurdle over the creation of a $1.776 billion fund for victims of what Trump has called government “weaponization,” including possibly the January 6 rioters.
Lawmakers, including many in Trump’s Republican Party, have voiced deep skepticism over the proposal and a federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from creating or operating it at least through mid-June. The ruling was made in one of three lawsuits seeking to scuttle the fund.
The “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” set up under a settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax records, was widely derided by critics as a “slush fund” for Trump’s political allies.
Senators recoiled from the fund when it was rolled out last week and canceled a planned vote on funding immigration enforcement in protest. Some Republican lawmakers have discussed placing guardrails on the fund or eliminating it entirely.
‘SCREAMING AT THE ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL’
Blanche was summoned to a tense meeting with Senate Republicans, many of whom expressed fury about the political optics of the fund and the prospect that people convicted of violent crimes could receive taxpayer-funded payouts.
“The Republican senators were pissed,” Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said on his podcast. “The entire meeting, they were screaming at the acting attorney general.”
Trump has backed the plan, writing in a social media post that he is helping those “abused” by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.
Blanche has defended the fund, saying there are no partisan requirements to file a claim. A five-person commission, four of whom Blanche will appoint directly, would oversee compensation for those claiming to be victims of “lawfare” or “weaponization,” terms Trump and his allies have long used to condemn cases against them.
The pushback from Senate Republicans, whose support he would need for confirmation, shows the risks of Blanche’s Trump-centered approach. Courts have also voiced distrust of the DOJ in several cases.
“There’s just a fundamental incompatibility between his (Trump’s) demand that the Justice Department carry out loyally all of his retributive goals, and his desire to see those things succeed in courts and before grand juries,” said Peter Keisler, a former DOJ official who served as acting attorney general under Republican President George W. Bush.
A department spokesperson said Blanche has “strong, productive relationships with both Congress and the courts as the laws of our nation are enforced.”
“Any notion that Acting AG Blanche lacks support from these institutions is simply false,” the spokesperson said.
DEFENDING TRUMP
A day after the confrontation with Republican lawmakers, Blanche was rebuked by a federal judge.
Tennessee-based U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw dismissed a human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, finding the prosecution was improperly brought in retaliation for his legal challenge to his wrongful deportation to El Salvador last year.
In his ruling, the judge cited Blanche’s remarks in a June 2025 Fox News interview when Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, said the government began investigating Abrego after another federal judge questioned his deportation.
Crenshaw, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, said Blanche’s statements tied DOJ leadership “to the tainted investigation and confirm what motivated it.”
The Justice Department has vowed to appeal the ruling, calling it “wrong and dangerous.” In court filings, prosecutors have denied any political motivation.
Blanche worked his way from a paralegal to a supervisor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, a magnet for top-flight federal prosecutors. He left his position at a prominent New York law firm in 2023 to represent Trump, who at the time struggled to find lawyers to defend him against a crush of state and federal investigations.
“He’s lived this lawfare for years. He understands the viciousness of it. He understands the dangers of it,” said Mike Davis, a Trump ally and the head of the Article III Project, a conservative legal advocacy group, who called Blanche the “man for the moment.”
Blanche built a rapport with Trump, adopting his pugilistic style in defending against three of the four criminal cases Trump faced in his years out of office. He was installed as second-in-command at the Justice Department after Trump won the 2024 election.
Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School and a legal ethics expert, said Blanche’s past role as Trump’s lawyer may put him “in a different mindset” than others who have run the DOJ.
“You have really one person that you’re looking out for and you grow to think of them and their goals as the be all and end all of your professional life,” Roiphe said. “Then when you assume a position where you’re supposed to be representing the public, you might have an altered view.”
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Michael Learmonth and Sanjeev Miglani)
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