The President of the USA Donald Trump on Monday he was officially nominated Todd Blanche to serve as the US the general prosecutormoving to install his former personal attorney as the top US law enforcement official.
Trump submitted Blanche’s name to the US Senate, the White House said, days after he committed to nominating her. He has served as Acting Attorney General since April.
Blanche’s appointment provides a test of Trump’s influence with Senate Republicans, who have shown a growing willingness to resist parts of the president’s agenda after months of acquiescing to his demands. Blanche would need near-unanimous Republican support in the Senate, which Republicans control by a narrow 53-47 margin.
The appointment is a vote of confidence in Blanche after the Justice Department was forced to scrap a plan to create a nearly $1.8 billion fund for victims of what Trump has called “government weaponry.” The plan drew sharp backlash, much of it directed at Blanche, from Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
Republican senators led the charge against the weapons fund, refusing to vote to fund Trump’s immigration crackdown until Blanche committed to removing the planned fund.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a key Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has previously expressed skepticism about Blanche over the weapons fund and a criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey.
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Trump has eyed Blanche’s moves as acting attorney general to speed up cases against his opponents, including securing a second indictment against Comey and bringing charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a prominent civil rights organization.
After the appointment, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary panel, praised Blanche for his “commitment to transparency and support for law enforcement.”
“Blanche is qualified and has demonstrated his commitment to restoring law and order throughout our country,” Grassley said.
The panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, criticized the selection.
“Donald Trump has engaged in the most corrupt enterprise in the history of the Presidency,” Durbin said in a statement. “Todd Blanche apparently didn’t notice.”
Blanche, 51, took over the Justice Department after Trump fired Pam Bondi in April amid tensions over the agency’s release of files on convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and frustration that the department was not moving hard enough against alleged White House political enemies.
Blanche, who served as Bondi’s top deputy, previously defended Trump in three of the four criminal cases he faced in his years outside of office. To his critics, Blanche has continued to act as Trump’s personal protector while overseeing a department that is supposed to pursue justice equally.
Blanche signed a sweeping agreement that bars tax authorities from auditing years of past tax returns from Trump, his relatives and his businesses. He has also openly embraced an ongoing criminal investigation into whether Trump’s past investigations constituted a conspiracy against him.
“Blanche has abandoned what she learned about blind justice and ethical law enforcement as a career federal prosecutor,” said Stacey Young, head of Justice Connection, a group that seeks to support DOJ employees targeted by the Trump administration.
Blanche is a former federal prosecutor in New York who had little involvement in politics before representing Trump. He has won the trust of Trump allies by supporting claims that Trump was mistreated by the legal system.
