Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, has presided over more than a year of disruption unlike any in the Justice Department’s history, a period of mass firings, politically motivated prosecutions and erosion of the department’s tradition of independence from the White House.
On Wednesday, Mr. Blanche, 51, will have to defend that record before the Senate Judiciary Committee as he seeks confirmation to permanently serve in his position.
The exercise is somewhat symbolic. Mr. Blanche, who succeeded Pam Bondi after her ouster in April, could serve in an acting capacity for the remainder of President Trump’s term. But the referendum on Mr. Blanche is in a broader sense a referendum on Mr. Trump’s vision of the department as a projection of his power and extension of his will.
It is a moment of rare leverage for the Senate. It takes a single Republican vote against Mr. Blanche to sink his nomination. Two lame-duck Republicans who sit on the committee, Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, have repeatedly raised questions about Mr. Blanche’s role in creating a $1.8 billion fund for those claiming to be victims of actions by the Biden administration, and in shielding the president and his family from tax investigations.
The hearing is likely to cover a broad range of topics. Here are some of them.
Pursuing Trump’s Perceived Enemies
Mr. Blanche, a former federal prosecutor who served as the president’s defense lawyer, has played a central role in the department’s day-to-day operations since being sworn in as deputy attorney general in March 2025.
From the start, he has been guided by a maximalist interpretation of Article II of the Constitution. By Mr. Blanche’s reading, the president has the legal right to not only dictate policy, but to order up investigations against targets of his choice, or demand the department drop charges against his allies.
Mr. Blanche has justified taking these actions by claiming that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his appointees weaponized the Justice Department and F.B.I. to persecute Mr. Trump and his supporters. Thus far, however, prosecutors have not uncovered sufficient evidence to convict any of the officials the president has publicly labeled criminals. In several episodes — including efforts to charge Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director — they failed to even secure sustainable grand jury indictments.
But Mr. Blanche has kept at it. In April, just after Ms. Bondi was fired for not moving quickly enough against Mr. Trump’s foes, the department indicted Mr. Comey for posting a picture of seashells on beach arrayed to read “86 47.” Mr. Blanche claimed the image was a serious threat of violence against the president.
The department’s high-profile effort to investigate and punish so-called “anti-weaponization” — an in-house working group created by a Trump executive order — has had similarly anemic results. Mr. Blanche moved swiftly to box out the group’s Trump-appointed leader, Ed Martin, whom he viewed as an inexperienced and bungling neophyte.
Mr. Blanche, who was known as a methodical prosecutor, created an organizational plan for the weaponization group that assigned key investigative lanes to some of his deputies.
They were responsible for investigating potential wrongdoing by federal officials who investigated Mr. Trump, including Jack Smith, the former special counsel; Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney; agents who scrutinized a conservative Christian group in Richmond, Va.; and prosecutors who investigated anti-abortion activists under the FACE Act, a 1994 law that prohibits obstruction and intimidation at women’s clinics.
None of these inquiries have resulted in indictments — just a pair of fact-finding reports.
Rewarding Mr. Trump’s Allies
Another source of tension at Mr. Blanche’s hearing is likely to be his involvement in the creation of a $1.8 billion fund intended to compensate Trump allies who believe they were wronged by political investigations overseen by Democratic administrations. Mr. Blanche unnerved some Republicans in May when he refused to rule out whether taxpayer money could be funneled to violent rioters who assaulted police officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
More recently, Mr. Blanche has insisted that the fund would not move forward, though he has stubbornly refused to rescind the memo that established it. Mr. Trump has injected his brand of uncertainty into the fight, suggesting in a series of public statements that he still loves the idea of the fund, and believes that people who suffered in court at the hands of the government should receive financial compensation.
The fund emerged from a deal reached between the president’s personal lawyers and senior officials who work for Mr. Blanche, an agreement that ended a lawsuit Mr. Trump filed against the Internal Revenue Service. As part of that deal, Mr. Blanche signed a document granting the president, his family and his businesses another lucrative boon: expansive protections against past I.R.S. investigation. Even now, Mr. Blanche has given no indication that he intends to scrap the tax provision.
Questions surrounding the compensation fund could land poorly with Mr. Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who has drawn a red line at Mr. Blanche being too soft on Jan. 6 rioters. Mr. Cornyn, the Texas Republican, has raised concerns about the tax benefits that Mr. Trump received.
Additional questions could be asked about a scathing ruling issued on Monday by the federal judge in Miami who oversaw Mr. Trump’s suit against the I.R.S. In the ruling, the judge, Kathleen M. Williams, excoriated Mr. Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department officials who devised the plan to end the suit, saying it was not a legitimate settlement, but rather an improper exercise in self-dealing.
Judge Williams had especially sharp words for Mr. Blanche, noting that she was “extremely troubled” by the testimony he gave to the Senate in May when he asserted that the settlement had never been submitted to a court because the case had been dismissed, and there was “no mechanism” for reviewing the agreement.
“This answer is, at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous,” the judge wrote. “The court was available to review any pleading by any party at any time during this lawsuit.”
Releasing the Epstein Files
Mr. Blanche is expected to face a host of questions about his handling of government files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and about his interview of Mr. Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
As deputy attorney general, Mr. Blanche oversaw the review and release of the Epstein files that Congress demanded, after the Trump administration reneged on its initial promise to release the documents last summer.
The eventual release of the documents was sharply criticized by some of Mr. Epstein’s victims for revealing their personal information, and by lawmakers who charged that the administration tried to withhold information that linked Mr. Epstein to Mr. Trump — something Mr. Blanche has denied.
Mr. Blanche has insisted the Epstein review was handled professionally, but the issue became a political liability for the president and a logistical nightmare for Justice Department employees. For months, the review of documents consumed large parts of the department, as first F.B.I. agents, then national security prosecutors, then criminal prosecutors. New York and Florida prosecutors were then assigned to review millions of pages.
Mr. Blanche has said his agency complied with the law, but has expressed doubt that people would be satisfied. “I think that there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents,” he said. “And there’s nothing I can do about that.”
