Since President Donald Trump tapped Todd Blanche, his former defense attorney, to temporarily lead the Justice Department this month, the message from those familiar with the president’s thinking has remained consistent: A permanent shot at the job of attorney general is Blanche’s to lose.
But that hasn’t stopped a frenzied competition to push other candidates for what has become one of the most important Cabinet-level posts in the president’s plans for his second term. And the uncertainty around top leadership roles has prompted concern from some in a department already struggling with claims of politicization and the abandonment of long-held norms over the lengths to which Trump’s next pick may go to impress him.
Following Trump’s decision to fire Blanche’s predecessor, Pam Bondi, various factions of the president’s MAGA coalition have rallied around figures like Harmeet K. Dhillon, currently head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and Jeanine Pirro, the sharp-tongued former Fox News host and current U.S. attorney in D.C., as alternatives.
Neither Dhillon nor Pirro has been so forward as to openly suggest an interest in the job. But both have taken steps in recent days that are viewed by insiders as efforts to raise their profile and jockey for the president’s attention.
Blanche, meanwhile, has quickly moved to leave his own mark on the Justice Department’s downtown Washington headquarters in his new role, pushing out Bondi’s top spokespeople and installing a key ally in a top deputy position. Others within Trump’s orbit have seized on the department’s shake-up to push their own favored candidates for influential jobs.
Some have urged Dhillon and Ed Martin — the president’s pardon attorney and a veteran of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” effort, with whom Blanche has clashed in the past— for top spots, according to multiple people familiar with those efforts. Those people, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments of current dynamics.
Trump has given no indication of when, or if, he intends to formally nominate a permanent replacement for Bondi. Either option carries risks: Nominating Blanche could result in a fiery confirmation fight, but leaving him as an unconfirmed attorney general gives him less stature and legitimacy.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt last week downplayed the notion of a horse race, telling reporters the president is currently satisfied with Blanche in the job.
“There are always names floated in the press,” Leavitt said. “Sometimes I have a chuckle when I read some of the reports about certain people floated for certain jobs. As far as the president is concerned, right now, Todd Blanche remains the acting attorney general.”
Trump’s decision to fire Bondi followed months of frustration with the limited progress she had made in delivering on one of his chief expectations for the department: his desire to see his political enemies put on trial.
As Bondi’s chief deputy, Blanche played a central role in many of the decisions made during her tenure. Since taking command, the 51-year-old former federal line prosecutor has sidestepped questions on how he will approach the job differently.
“I can tell you that we’re doing exactly the same thing we’ve been doing for the past 14 months,” Blanche said last week during an appearance at the Semafor World Economy Summit, “which is working hard to put all the president’s priorities in action.”
That interview was one of several he has given over the past two weeks, itself a sign of how his approach is already differing from Bondi’s. She rarely agreed to media interviews outside of Fox News, of which Trump is an avid viewer.
In addition to the Semafor event, a gathering aimed at an audience of global opinion makers, Blanche also sat for an extended interview last week with NBC News, a network the president has repeatedly maligned.
At the same time, Blanche is sending signals that he is pressing ahead aggressively on Trump’s agenda.
He has pushed to accelerate ongoing probes of some of the president’s rivals, including former CIA Director John Brennan, who during the Obama administration helped investigate ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. (A top prosecutor overseeing the Brennan probe left the investigation last week over concerns about its direction, three people familiar with her departure from the case said.)
And last week Blanche released the first report from the department’s Weaponization Working Group, detailing what he described as the Biden Justice Department’s improper targeting of antiabortion protesters.
That weaponization group is expected to release other reports in coming weeks, including one examining the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol under former attorney general Merrick Garland, multiple people familiar with their efforts said.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Blanche has moved quickly to put his own stamp on department personnel.
Last week, he named Trent McCotter, a conservative litigator who previously represented Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon, as principal associate deputy attorney general — a key position with significant influence in shaping department policy.
McCotter and another trusted Blanche adviser — Colin McDonald, head of the department’s new fraud division — have effectively taken over the department’s day-to-day management, a responsibility Blanche previously held as deputy attorney general, according to people familiar with their roles. The deputy role cannot be officially filled since Blanche still technically occupies it while also serving as acting attorney general.
Speculation over what role Dhillon might play in the department’s new hierarchy has grown particularly intense in recent weeks.
Dhillon’s supporters laud the pugilistic style she has brought to her job as head of the Civil Rights Division. From maligning her critics as “hoes” on social media to opening a slew of investigations into DEI practices, state voter rolls and antisemitism allegations, her supporters say she best embodies the aggressive push for top-to-bottom change Trump has demanded from his Justice Department.
She has unapologetically overseen a gutting of the civil rights staff, which has lost nearly 75 percent of its career employees since she took over last year. “I think it’s fine,” she told conservative podcaster Glenn Beck about the departures. “The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights law, not woke ideology.”
A coordinated social media push backing her for attorney general, led by conservative influencers including Mike Cernovich and Rogan O’Handley, began within minutes of Bondi’s firing this month. And she has key allies in the White House, including her former law partner David Warrington, who is now Trump’s White House counsel.
Dhillon has done little to tamp down conjecture on her future. In recent days she has filled her active social media feeds with posts from influential conservatives praising her work and, on Thursday, a slickly produced video set to pulsing electronic music that highlighted her TV appearances and headlines she has generated while on the job.
She did not respond to requests for comment for this story but responded to other recent reports on her potential for promotion in a post to X this month. “I look forward to supporting [Todd Blanche] as Acting AG!!” she wrote.
Some of Dhillon’s supporters would like to see her elevated to associate attorney general, the department’s third-ranking position, if she does not get the top job. Coincidentally or not, a widely circulated report in right-wing media suggested over the weekend that Stanley Woodward, who currently holds that slot, had been forced out to make way for Dhillon.
Woodward, in an interview last week, insisted he remains very much on the job. “I serve at the pleasure of the president,” he said. “I do not know that general Bondi’s departure has any bearing on that, besides that when the president says my time will come, my time will come.”
Pirro, like Dhillon, has sought to publicly downplay any suggestion she is angling for any job other than the one she currently holds.
“I’m doing what I love, and that’s why I left a very nice life,” she told reporters at a recent news conference, referring to her Fox News stint. “That’s what the president has asked me to do, and that’s what I’m doing.”
She declined to comment last week about the continued speculation on her prospects. But Pirro’s cheerleaders point out privately how often Trump has praised her work as D.C.’s U.S. attorney. Her friendship with the president dates back to their time together in New York. She enjoys an unusual direct line to the president and the two speak often by phone, according to a person familiar with their interactions.
Few others have moved as aggressively as Pirro to deliver cases against Trump’s political adversaries, although those efforts have mostly faltered.
A federal judge in March excoriated Pirro’s office for its bid to subpoena the Federal Reserve as part of a criminal investigation into Chair Jerome H. Powell, whom Trump is seeking to replace. The judge called the effort nakedly political and backed by “essentially zero evidence.”
Despite that, prosecutors from Pirro’s office showed up unannouncedat the central bank last week only to be turned away — a signal that she has no plans to abandon the Powell probe while Trump weighs the future leadership of the Justice Department.
Anyone Trump might nominate for attorney general would need to brave the Senate confirmation process. The Republican-held chamber voted to confirm Blanche, Dhillon and Pirro for their current roles last year, but their records in those positions have drawn criticism on Capitol Hill, at times from within Trump’s own party.
Blanche has spent the past several months beating back denunciations by some Republican lawmakers for his oversight of the release of the Justice Department’s files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) has criticized Pirro’s investigation of Powell, saying he will withhold support for Trump’s nominee to lead the central bank, Kevin Warsh, until the Justice Department drops what the senator has described as the baseless probe.
As a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Tillis effectively holds veto power over anyone Trump nominates for attorney general, if he joins with Democrats in opposing the pick.
Asked last week whether he would support Blanche or Pirro for attorney general, Tillis said he is most concerned about whether any nominee has excused the Jan. 6 attacks, which he described as “a red line.”
“It’s the first thing I have my staff look for, because nothing else matters after that,” Tillis said in a brief interview.
The senator raised concerns over a speech Blanche gave at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas this month, in which Blanche touted Trump’s pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters and boasted that the Justice Department has “cleaned house” of any staff members involved in the prosecutions of the president.
But Tillis signaled he could still be open to a Blanche nomination. “I need to go back and understand the context,” he said.
Even without a nomination, Blanche could continue to lead the Justice Department in an acting capacity for months to come.
For his own part, Blanche has suggested he is focused less on his title and more on the work at hand.
“If President Trump chooses to keep me as acting, that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate me, that’s an honor,” he recently told reporters.
And if Trump eventually sours on Blanche, as he did on Bondi, Blanche said, “I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’”
Emily Davies contributed to this report.
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