Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee faces an uphill battle to secure the job amid fresh revelations of the key role he played in attempting to kill off the Epstein firestorm.
Days after Trump formally nominated Todd Blanche for Senate confirmation, a bombshell report in the New York Times has amplified concerns about his ability to lead the Justice Department independently.
“He is the most corrupt nominee for attorney general in the history of the United States, and that is saying a lot,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a former attorney general of Connecticut, said during a press call on Wednesday.
According to the report, Blanche and other Trump aides—including Vice President JD Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Communications Director Steven Cheung and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt—held a panicked meeting in the Situation Room in July last year, desperate to quell the MAGA civil war that had erupted over the administration’s failure to release the Epstein files.
At the meeting, Blanche, who was then the deputy to Attorney General Pam Bondi, laid out what he saw as their best options.
One option was to have a Justice Department official interview Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, and release the transcript. Blanche, who once described Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus as a “friend”, reportedly nominated himself.
He ended up carrying out the interview, in which Maxwell described Trump as a “gentleman” who did nothing inappropriate, and soon after, Blanche signed off on her controversial transfer to a lower security prison.
A second option was to petition Federal District Courts in Florida and New York to unseal grand jury testimonies related to Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous sex trafficking crimes, as these were unlikely to contain any new information, and therefore, releasing them was unlikely to damage Trump.
What’s more, as Blanche knew from years as a lawyer, the bar to unseal grand jury material was exceptionally high, so it was unlikely that a federal judge would do so anyway.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Blanche and the DOJ about the report, which comes as Democrats, legal experts and advocacy groups mount a campaign to block the former Trump attorney from being confirmed by the Senate.
Opponents argue he is not fit for the job, pointing to his handling of the Epstein files, which identified numerous victims but kept the names of potential co-conspirators hidden, as well as other controversies, such as Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund and the backroom deal giving the president immunity from continuing IRS audits.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong – Take your pick,” Republican stalwart Mitch McConnell said at the time.
On Wednesday, Blumenthal described Blanche as Trump’s “personal fixer” and “John Mitchell on steroids,” a reference to Richard Nixon’s attorney general, who was ultimately convicted for his role in the Watergate scandal.
Traci Feit Love, the founder and executive director of Lawyers for Good Government, said more than 2000 attorneys had already signed a petition calling for the Senate to reject the appointment, and many more were expected to join the push.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse also noted that 35 retired federal judges have also filed a motion alleging Blanche committed “fraud upon the court” as part of that settlement, calling it “most egregious conduct” and potentially grounds for immediate suspension or disbarment in New York.
“His obstruction and incompetence should worry Republicans,” Whitehouse said.
While millions of files relating to the crimes and networks of Epstein still remain redacted, Blanche has repeatedly said that the department had met its obligations under the Epstein Transparency Act.
But the revelations in the New York Times raise fresh concerns about the role he played in trying to mitigate the political fallout for the president, who came to office promising his MAGA base that he would release the files.
The Situation Room meeting came 10 days after the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had jointly released a memo declaring that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” and “we did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
This came months after Bondi told Fox News that the files were sitting on her desk and would be released soon.
But while Bondi was sacked by the president and largely blamed for the botched handling of the files, she has since testified it was Blanche who oversaw the delayed, and in many cases incomplete, release of the Epstein documents.
Bondi also told the House Oversight Committee that she only learned that Maxwell had been transferred to a low-security prison through news reports “after it happened”, claiming: “I had nothing to do with that.”
