More than one thousand former Justice Department employees urged the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to reject Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general.
The letter was signed by more than 1,200 former Justice Department employees spanning fourteen administrations.
It also comes just days before Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, is slated to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of his planned confirmation vote.
‘Since his confirmation as Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche has shown time and again that his guiding star is fealty to the President, not the Constitution,’ Stacey Young, the founder and executive director of the Justice Connection, a DOJ alumni group that organized the letter, said in a statement Tuesday.
The former DOJ employees ticked through a long list of ‘corruption and abuses’ that they argued Blanche has overseen during his tenure, including ‘vindictive prosecutions and investigations of the President’s foes; the deals designed to reward lawbreakers with taxpayer dollars; the erasure of accountability for January 6; the mishandling of the Epstein files; and the denigration of judges,’ and ‘repeated violations’ of court orders, among other things.
‘But we want to focus on an area that deserves just as much attention: Todd Blanche’s degradation of DOJ’s apolitical career workforce,’ the group said in the letter, sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.
‘The consequences of Blanche’s attacks on DOJ’s apolitical workforce radiate beyond the halls of Main Justice, affecting the entire country,’ the group said.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. A group of former DOJ employees urged the Senate to reject Blanche’s confirmation, arguing that he has sought to politicize the Justice Department under Trump’s second presidential term
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche is seen at a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC
Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi walks alongside President Donald Trump at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC
‘The culture of fear Blanche has instilled within DOJ’s workforce must end’, they added. ‘Respect for career professionals must return.’
‘Would-be job applicants need to believe the Justice Department lives up to the virtue in its name. And instead of exhibiting fealty to the president, the Attorney General must heed John Adams’ admonition that our republic remains a ‘government of laws, not of men.’’
The letter was signed by former officials who served in the Justice Department under both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, and includes dozens of US attorneys, component heads, and other senior leaders across DOJ and FBI, including some who have worked with Blanche directly. It can be read in full here.
A giant portrait of President Donald Trump looks down from the Justice Department headquarters
Trump’s nominee for Attorney General Todd Blanche meets with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley at his office in Washington, DC
Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi applauds is seen with President Donald Trump in Memphis, Tennessee
A spokesperson for the Justice Department dismissed the letter Tuesday, describing its signatories as a ‘who’s who list of partisan activists[.]’
‘Law enforcement throughout the nation supports the nomination of Acting Attorney General Blanche,’ the Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement, ‘including the Major Cities Chiefs Association, representing police leadership in dozens of major U.S. cities; the International Association of Chiefs of Police, representing tens of thousands of law enforcement leaders worldwide; and the Major County Sheriffs of America, representing hundreds of the nation’s largest sheriffs’ offices.’
Blanche has sparked ire for some of his controversial actions as deputy attorney general. Last November, he made headlines after he characterized the many court fights playing out in Trump’s second term as a ‘war’ between the DOJ and so-called ‘activist judges.’
His remarks, delivered at a fireside event hosted by the Federalist Society, prompted fierce pushback and rebuke, including from the New York State Bar Association, and from the Article III Coalition, a group of 50 former federal judges appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents.
Blanche used his time at that event to excoriate federal judges for pausing or blocking some of Trump’s biggest executive orders and actions and to urge young lawyers and law students in the audience to fight back.
‘It is a war,’ Blanche said then, ‘and it is something we will not win unless we keep on fighting.’
The group of former judges chastised Blanche’s rhetoric, which they said ‘not only endangers individual judges and court staff, but also undermines the public’s trust in the judiciary as an impartial and co-equal branch of government.’
