Our Official Letter in Opposition to Todd Blanche's Attorney General Confirmation
The Attorney General should demonstrate a commitment to the Rule of Law and impartial stewardship.
Today, the Society for the Rule of Law Institute submitted the following letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the confirmation of Todd Blanche as United States Attorney General:
Dear Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Durbin:
The Society for the Rule of Law Institute (SRLI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending the rule of law, Constitution, and American democracy from a traditionally conservative perspective. Many of SRLI’s leaders previously served at the highest levels of past Republican Administrations. With that background, I write to you to express SRLI’s opposition to the confirmation of Todd Blanche as United States Attorney General.
Throughout its history, the Justice Department’s professionalism, integrity, and independence from improper political interference have been indispensable features of the rule of law in America. At its best, the Department and its people have embodied our constitutional commitment to liberty under law, advancing public safety and national security while defending individual rights and freedoms. Occasionally, however, the Department has fallen short of this mission and dangerously undermined those same ideals. As former Attorney General Robert Jackson famously warned: “While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”
Given their immense “control over life, liberty, and reputation,” it is imperative that all members of the Department—but especially its leadership—be fair-minded, ethical, and committed to the equal application of the law. In an earlier letter to this Committee regarding former Attorney General Bondi’s nomination, we emphasized the pre-eminent importance of these qualities for an Attorney General candidate. Indeed, we specifically cautioned against confirming someone who would:
Wield their significant prosecutorial powers on behalf of the president rather than Justice itself;
Apply the law—especially criminal law—unequally for personal or political reasons;
Refuse to recuse from matters that gave rise to a conflict of interest;
Fail to respect the judiciary as the branch responsible for saying what the law is.
Though we did not oppose her confirmation, we were disappointed to see Attorney General Bondi often succumb to these temptations, perpetuating the appearance and reality that the Department’s vast powers were being wielded to reward the Administration’s friends while retaliating against its critics and adversaries. It is therefore more vital than ever that the Department be led by an individual who will shield its employees from inappropriate political influence, uphold professional standards, and work to restore the DOJ’s institutional credibility with all Americans.
During his tenure as Deputy Attorney General and Acting Attorney General, Mr. Blanche has time and again proven himself incapable of such disciplined and impartial stewardship.
An Attorney General nominee has never served as a president’s personal lawyer so shortly before being nominated. Although not inherently disqualifying, this unprecedented situation places the onus on Mr. Blanche to demonstrate that his primary client is no longer Donald Trump, but the United States. His record offers no evidence or reason to believe that he will cease his “duty of fealty… to his former private client.”
Mr. Blanche played a major role in creating a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded Slush Fund for President Trump’s political supporters, and refused to rule out compensating those who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Further, he personally signed off on a perpetual immunity waiver from IRS scrutiny for President Trump, his businesses, and his family. He has also spearheaded prosecutions into and overseen investigations of many perceived political enemies of the president, including James Comey, Lisa Cook, Jerome Powell, Senator Mark Kelly, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. While at the same time, he touted the mass, indiscriminate pardons of convicted January 6th rioters as one of the Administration’s crowning achievements.
He has additionally shown a troubling disregard for fundamental rule of law principles. Despite the near-unanimous passage of a Congressional Act requiring the DOJ to publish all unclassified Epstein files, Mr. Blanche has continued to withhold critical documents from the public. Worse still, according to recent reports, instead of taking accountability for suppressing their publication, he filed a knowingly meritless motion to pawn off blame onto a federal judge who was simply following black-letter legal procedure. He has also failed to recuse himself from Trump-related matters, even after the Department’s top ethics lawyer advised him to do so (for which this lawyer was subsequently fired). And at a prominent legal gathering, he declared “war” against the judiciary—an independent branch of government increasingly targeted by reckless rhetoric across the political spectrum, but most egregiously from this president and his senior advisors.
Under Mr. Blanche’s leadership, first as Deputy Attorney General and then as Acting Attorney General, respect for the Department of Justice has reached historic lows. It has lost talented attorneys and agents through politically motivated terminations and forced resignations, a disturbing blow to DOJ competence that Mr. Blanche has openly bragged about. It has lost the confidence of the courts, which no longer reliably afford it the presumption of regularity. And it has lost the confidence of the American people, who clearly see its naked politicization.
As we acknowledged in our previous letter, the president is fully entitled to appoint someone who shares his policy priorities. But given the awesome responsibility of leading the Department of Justice and restoring its rapidly eroding credibility and diminished capacity, the next Attorney General must assiduously avoid the dangerous pitfalls highlighted above. Mr. Blanche, far from doing so, has already exhibited all of these warning signs during his time at DOJ.
We agree with the Editors of National Review, who recently wrote that the Senate is:
“[D]uty-bound to do what it can to ensure that the Justice Department, created by Congress, fulfills its constitutional and statutory obligation to enforce the law evenhandedly, without fear, favor, or political bias.
It can’t fulfill this duty and also lend its imprimatur to Blanche’s dubious handiwork as Trump’s ideal AG.”
We thus urge the committee to reject Mr. Blanche’s nomination. The Constitution vests the Senate with “advice and consent” over high-ranking nominees to prevent, in the words of Federalist 76, the appointment of officials who will be “obsequious instruments of [the president’s] pleasure.” Now more than ever, the Justice Department needs a leader whose commitment to the rule of law transcends partisanship or loyalty to the president. For the reasons described, Mr. Blanche is not that person.
As a former chief Republican nominations counsel to this Committee, who had the honor of working on the confirmation process for a previous Republican Attorney General, I do not transmit these sentiments lightly. This Committee and the Senate, however, can never become mere rubber stamps for a president who seeks to abuse executive power and subvert the law. If it were to become so, it would fatally undermine the constitutional design carefully crafted at Philadelphia in 1787. The position of Attorney General is too important for this Committee to lower its standards and confirm a nominee whose record so sharply departs from the Justice Department’s proudest traditions of prosecutorial integrity and equal justice under law.
Respectfully,
Gregg Nunziata Executive Director
Society for the Rule of Law Institute