Blanche, a former federal prosecutor, was a leading player on Trump’s defense team in the New York case, which resulted in a conviction in May.
President-elect Donald Trump is naming Todd Blanche, the attorney who led the legal team that represented the Republican at his criminal hush money trial, as the second highest-ranking Justice Department official.
A former federal prosecutor herself, Blanche has been one of the linchpins on Trump’s defense team, both in the New York case that resulted in a conviction in May and the federal cases brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
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Todd is an outstanding lawyer who will bring much-needed leadership as Department of Justice, repairing a System of Justice that has been broken for too long,” Trump said in a Thursday statement unveiling his selection.
If the Republican-led Senate confirms her as deputy attorney general, Blanche will oversee the daily work of the vast Justice Department, which Trump has promised to transform radically.
The announcement comes a day after the president-elect said he had chosen as attorney general Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump loyalist who once faced a Justice Department sex trafficking investigation that ended in no charges. Trump is naming two other defense team members to senior Justice Department posts.
Trump said Emil Bove, a former federal prosecutor, would be the principal associate deputy attorney general and serve as acting deputy attorney general until Blanche is confirmed.
Trump nominated D. John Sauer, the lawyer who argued his presidential immunity case before the U.S. Supreme Court, to the solicitor general post, which represents the administration before the nation’s highest court. Sauer previously served as solicitor general for Missouri and is a Rhodes scholar who clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Blanche represented Trump in the Washington case about interference in the 2020 election and the Florida case against the former president for hoarding classified documents at his estate in Mar-a-Lago. In both cases, the defense was able to mount a legal strategy based heavily on delaying the cases beyond the election.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon last summer threw out the classified documents case, finding that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith was illegal. The 2020 election case was stalled amid wrangling over Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution, which went to the Supreme Court.
