Todd Blanche, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, awakened one morning in late September to the news that his cheerful, at times insubordinate subordinate Ed Martin had blindsided him again.
Mr. Martin, given nearly free rein inside the department by President Trump to investigate perceived administration enemies, had sent a threatening letter to an ex-F.B.I. agent who had testified, years before, against the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for spouting lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre.
A ticked-off Mr. Blanche asked Mr. Martin: Why pick a pointless fight that would embarrass the administration on behalf of a fringe activist? He demanded that Mr. Martin rescind the letter, according to three people briefed on a phone call between the two men.
Mr. Martin, who had used his brief tenure as the top federal prosecutor in Washington to purge government lawyers who charged Jan. 6 rioters, complied.
Mr. Blanche has, in a few instances, defended the Justice Department against the most extreme efforts of Mr. Trump and his allies to pursue an intensifying campaign of retribution. But he has hardly been a bulwark of resistance. In seven months as deputy attorney general, Mr. Blanche, the former head of Mr. Trump’s criminal defense team, has more often than not enabled the president’s effort to discard processes and restraints that once preserved the department’s independence.
And even when Mr. Blanche has pushed back, he has often been overruled by the White House or undermined by Trump stalwarts picked to execute the president’s orders.
On Thursday, federal prosecutors in Virginia indicted New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, a Democrat who won a civil fraud case against Mr. Trump, even after Mr. Blanche and Attorney General Pam Bondi warned the White House there was not enough evidence to secure a conviction.
Mr. Martin, who wears a Columbo-inspired trench coat and goes by “Eagle Ed,” was a driving force behind the indictment, which was secured by Lindsey Halligan, hastily installed by the president as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Mr. Blanche and Ms. Bondi, who had raised doubts about Ms. Halligan’s appointment, did not play a significant role in drafting court documents for the James indictment and were not given a head’s up about its timing, according to officials with knowledge of the situation.
The charges against Ms. James and an earlier indictment obtained by Ms. Halligan against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, have erased any doubts that Mr. Trump is personally directing key prosecutorial decisions.
The encounter also illustrated the jumbled power dynamic inside a Justice Department where inexperienced operatives like Mr. Martin wield authority that rivals officials like Mr. Blanche, with their impressive titles, black SUVs and responsibility to obtain convictions, not just trophy indictments.
And as further proof of the cross currents blowing through the department, Mr. Blanche has started to be viewed with suspicion by some Trump allies on the right who wonder about his commitment to carrying out the president’s desires.
As a former federal prosecutor turned arch-MAGA loyalist, Mr. Blanche finds himself in a predicament common among the highest-credentialed Trump appointees.
Unlike many of Mr. Trump’s high-ranking appointees in the first term, Mr. Blanche knew Mr. Trump well when he took the job and knew he was expected to carry out his boss’s orders. Yet Mr. Blanche has also shown himself on occasion to be an institutionalist, holding off the president’s more extreme impulses. He has defended some subordinates against attack and pushed back, with limited success, against prosecutions he believes are unsupported by the evidence, seen by critics on the right as proof of disloyalty.
This account of Mr. Blanche’s actions since he took over one of the most powerful posts in federal law enforcement is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials, who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Mr. Blanche, 51, declined to be interviewed.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, described Mr. Blanche as Mr. Trump’s “close adviser and trusted ally,” adding, “Todd is working in lockstep with the rest of the administration.”
True to that description, Mr. Blanche has been willing to disregard core department norms.
He has allowed political investigations to move forward and has often flouted limits on publicly discussing ongoing inquiries that his predecessors generally honored.
Nor is there any indication he will take a public stand like William P. Barr, who resigned as attorney general after Mr. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election amid demands from the president that he find evidence of election fraud. Before stepping down, Mr. Barr demanded that Mr. Trump “stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”
Mr. Blanche, who shares the president’s maximalist view of executive power, has presided over a period of profound disruption and mass firings. He has blurred boundaries between public servant and personal lawyer, most notably during his July interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned confidante of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, prompting accusations from victims that his goal was to protect Mr. Trump.
He, like other department leaders, now routinely broadcasts White House talking points and attacks investigative subjects in ways that can affect legal proceedings.
Earlier this month, the judge overseeing the criminal case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order, accused Mr. Blanche of making “remarkable” public statements about the case. Those remarks, the judge determined, were an indication that the charges against Mr. Abrego Garcia could be vindictive instead of motivated by “a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct.”
Recently, Mr. Blanche has gone on conservative media outlets to claim, without evidence, that people protesting immigration raids are “domestic terrorists.”
Yet there are indications that Mr. Blanche has quietly pushed back against some orders. He has thus far held the line against the most conspiratorial MAGA projects, like investigating debunked claims that voting machines were rigged during the 2020 election or paying financial damages to Jan. 6 rioters, although both still remain a possibility.
That has made Mr. Blanche, who switched parties and ditched a partnership at a big New York law firm to represent Mr. Trump, a target. He has been singled out by right-wing influencers for what they call time-wasting and timidity, cast as the man who sometimes says no to an impatient president with a history of regarding lawyers, like Diet Cokes, as disposable items.
Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who has known Mr. Trump for decades, accused Mr. Blanche of blocking plans to offer compensation to the Jan. 6 rioters and to free a former Colorado county clerk, Tina Peters, convicted of breaching laws passed to safeguard voter machines.
“Everything that needs to be going forward in order to make Donald Trump’s presidency work is being stalled intentionally by this man,” Mr. Ticktin said in an interview on a right-wing podcast.
Mr. Blanche’s critics on the right have wasted no time reminding their followers of what they view as his unpardonable political sins, including having been registered as a Democrat until recently and having lunch with Kaitlan Collins of CNN.
His defenders have rallied in support. Matt Gaetz, Mr. Trump’s first pick for attorney general after his return to office, declared him “no squish” in a social media post that was shared by Donald Trump Jr. Hang-in-there-buddy backslaps were delivered at a recent going-away party for a top department official, Chad Mizelle.
“Pam and Todd will never get the credit they deserve for defeating nationwide injunctions, building the deportation legal rails, attacking crime and expanding Trump’s power,” Mr. Gaetz said in an interview.
“That’s because we’ll always have some supporters who want Liz Cheney in a dungeon, Fauci in stockades and Comey facing a firing squad for treason — in the next 10 minutes,” he added, referring to Ms. Cheney, the former Republican representative who supported Mr. Trump’s impeachment over Jan. 6, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the architect of Covid policies reviled on the right.
But the pressures are not all external. Last month, Mr. Blanche and Ms. Bondi failed in their effort to protect Erik S. Siebert, whom Mr. Trump muscled out as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia for not prosecuting Mr. Comey and Ms. James.
Mr. Trump then appointed Ms. Halligan to the post without giving either Ms. Bondi or Mr. Blanche the right of refusal. Both made clear privately that they believe Ms. Halligan — whose specialty is insurance law — is unqualified to run an office that handles complex terrorism and national security cases.
A department spokesman, Chad Gilmartin, said Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche “fully support” Ms. Halligan.
Ms. Halligan moved quickly to indict Mr. Comey on charges he lied to Congress, a case Mr. Blanche also believed was too weak to prosecute, based on briefings he had received. Mr. Comey and Ms. James have both denied the charges against them.
Mr. Blanche made no secret of his desire to be appointed to a top position in the department. He wound up with the No. 2 slot to reassure Republicans worried about Mr. Gaetz, who later withdrew as nominee amid allegations of sex trafficking and drug use, which he denies.
The Bondi-Blanche relationship was initially tense, in part because Ms. Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, had been given little say in the appointment of her immediate subordinates and suspected that Mr. Blanche was still gunning for the top job.
But Ms. Bondi eventually closed ranks with Mr. Blanche after he defended her to Trump aides who criticized her handling of the Epstein files this summer.
They bonded, in particular, over their mutual disdain for the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, whom they view as a lightweight more interested in social media than doing his job, according to seven current and former administration officials.
Mr. Patel is supposed to report to Mr. Blanche. In reality, Mr. Blanche and Ms. Bondi sometimes have trouble getting him on the same page with them, those people said.
In July, Mr. Blanche drafted a social media post for senior F.B.I. and Justice Department officials after the decision to close the Epstein investigation caused a furious backlash. The idea was to quell rumors of internal divisions over the announcement.
“All of us signed off on the contents of the memo and the conclusions stated in the memo,” Mr. Blanche wrote on X.
Mr. Patel was supposed to repost it. He never did.
An F.B.I. spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche said that “Kash Patel is doing an incredible job,” adding that they intend to ignore “baseless palace intrigue or useless gossip.”
When Mr. Blanche was confirmed in March, his stock was running exceptionally high with Mr. Trump, having just navigated him through the perils of multiple criminal cases.
Their relationship was never perfect. Mr. Trump was prone to berating him behind closed doors. But the two developed a candid rapport, according to a person familiar with the relationship.
Mr. Blanche approached his new job as a reset of sorts, they said: He was not interested in looking backward, helping Mr. Trump seek vengeance or revisiting his 2020 election loss.
It has not worked out that way.
Mr. Blanche has found his lane crowded by Trump whisperers, including William J. Pulte, a housing finance official who has pushed the Justice Department to investigate mortgage fraud allegations against Ms. James and others. Then there is Mr. Martin.
Mr. Blanche has repeatedly asked Mr. Martin to stop sending incendiary letters and confine his actions to issuing subpoenas and collecting evidence.
In August, after Mr. Martin showed up outside Ms. James’s house in Brooklyn with a New York Post photographer on the scene, Mr. Blanche called him to deliver another rebuke.
Yet it was Mr. Martin, and not Mr. Blanche, who was in the loop on the indictment of Ms. James on Thursday.
Hours before Ms. James was indicted, “Eagle Ed” Martin posted what seemed to be a sly hint: an illustration of an eagle flying over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Mr. Martin would not comment on the specifics of his interactions with Mr. Blanche. But he emailed a statement denying they were at loggerheads on anything.
“There are people outside the building who have no idea how Todd and I function inside the building — which in a way is how I want it — but, given all this B.S. being said — I gotta speak up,” Mr. Martin wrote.
“Todd and I have a great and robust relationship.”
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
The post Part Enabler, Part Buffer: The Bind of the Justice Dept.’s No. 2 appeared first on New York Times.
