President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will nominate Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to serve as the permanent U.S. attorney general. Blanche has been leading the Justice Department since April, following Pam Bondi’s resignation.
Speaking at a Rose Garden event tied to a White House dinner, Trump directed his team to begin the formal nomination process. “We are going to make him permanent attorney general,” Trump said, according to video of the remarks shared by White House aide Dan Scavino.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed the president’s strong support, telling Politico, “President Trump has a great relationship with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and is very pleased with the job he’s doing so far.” She described Blanche as “an American patriot” who “fearlessly fought against the Democrats’ unprecedented lawfare campaign” against Trump.
Todd Wallace Blanche, 51, grew up in the Denver suburbs and earned his undergraduate degree at American University in Washington, D.C. He attended Brooklyn Law School at night while working as a paralegal in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), graduating cum laude in 2003.
Blanche clerked for federal judges Denny Chin and Joseph Bianco (both now on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) before becoming a federal prosecutor in the same Manhattan office. He spent eight years there as an assistant U.S. attorney, rising to co-chief of the violent crimes unit, where he oversaw about two dozen prosecutors handling killings, kidnappings and other serious cases.
He left government service in 2014 for private practice, first at WilmerHale and then as a partner in the white-collar defense group at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. In a prelude to his Trump work, Blanche represented the president’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and won dismissal of a Manhattan mortgage-fraud case on double-jeopardy grounds.
Blanche joined Trump’s criminal defense team in 2023, reportedly telling colleagues in a resignation email: “I have been asked to represent Trump in the recently charged DA case, and after much thought/consideration, I have decided it is the best thing for me to do and an opportunity I should not pass up.”
He played a lead role in three of the four major criminal cases against Trump: the New York hush-money prosecution (resulting in conviction on 34 felony counts), and the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith on classified documents and 2020 election interference. Trump later praised Blanche’s tenacity in court and before the cameras.
After Trump’s 2024 victory, Blanche was nominated as deputy attorney general and confirmed by the Senate in March 2025 on a 52-46 vote. He became acting attorney general in April 2026 after Pam Bondi was forced out.
As acting AG, Blanche has pursued an aggressive docket aligned with Trump’s priorities, including a fresh grand jury indictment of former FBI Director James Comey on two felony counts related to an Instagram post, and intensified probes into former CIA Director John Brennan. He also oversaw a controversial IRS settlement that initially included a proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate individuals the administration views as victims of prior politicized prosecutions. The administration withdrew the fund plan this week, though Blanche maintained that Trump and his family remain protected from audits on past filings.
Blanche has expressed deep personal loyalty to Trump. In an April press conference, he said: “I love working for President Trump. It’s the greatest honor of a lifetime. If he chooses to nominate me, that’s an honor.”
The Senate is expected to take up the nomination shortly after it is formally transmitted, likely in the coming weeks. Following passage out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blanche’s nomination will move to the Senate floor for a full vote.
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Christina Botteri is the Executive Editor of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow her on X at @christinakb.
