Attorney General Todd Blanche struck an effusive, complimentary tone as he addressed Justice Department staff Thursday in his first public speech since being confirmed, a sharp contrast from the way he and other administration officials have described the department for the past year and a half.
Blanche — a career prosecutor turned President Donald Trump’s personal defense attorney turned top Justice Department official — warmly thanked career staffers for their hard work and vowed to lead the department with integrity.
The conciliatory and measured tone, delivered from the Great Hall at Justice Department headquarters, came after months of accusations by Trump, Blanche and administration allies that the department is riddled with politically motivated lawyers who have recklessly weaponized their prosecutorial power.
None of that was on evidence Thursday.
“You make me look good,” Blanche told the staffers. “When I talk to the president, when I talk to Congress … when I talk to the American people … when I talk about all the ways we’re having success, when I talk about the ways we’re making America safe, when I talk about the wins, when I talk about the success, I know it’s not me doing that.”
Blanche’s tenure — first as the deputy attorney general and then as acting attorney general — has been marked by a wholesale dismissal of the most experienced senior career staffers and the fleeing of thousands of government lawyers and support personnel.
Many of those who left have publicly accused the administration of ruining the department by imposing its political agenda, and the department has struggled to recruit high-quality attorneys to replace them.
Justice Department leaders, including Blanche, have often disregarded DOJ’s traditional distance from the White House on criminal matters. Under Blanche and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Justice Department has brought controversial cases against Trump’s political foes, including former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
In multiple instances, career prosecutors have quit or been pushed out if they spoke out against or resisted a decision to press ahead with a politically charged case. A handful of prosecutors, for example, were pushed out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia amid the push to prosecute Comey.
But on Thursday, the attorney general suggested he welcomed differences of opinion.
“I think disagreement is extraordinarily healthy,” Blanche said. “I think disagreement is the only way that we make the best decisions as a department. I think we should continue to do that, because I think the fair administration of justice and our jobs depend on that.”
Blanche delivered the speech days after he survived a bruising confirmation process, including rare Republican pushback against a Trump nominee.
Some GOP senators said they were concerned that Blanche would use his perch as attorney general to serve the president’s interests rather than those of the public. Blanche has repeatedly praised Trump and has said that the president has a right to weigh in on criminal prosecutions.
In his speech Thursday, Blanche scarcely mentioned Trump, except to thank him for entrusting him with the powerful position.
Instead, Blanche described the lifelong reverence he has felt for the Justice Department, starting with his career as a young paralegal in the Southern District of New York, before becoming a federal prosecutor there himself.
Blanche praised the career prosecutors working on cases across the country as the department’s backbone, promising to always try to do the right thing and defend the Constitution.
Blanche did not mention any of the Justice Department’s politically explosive cases, instead citing its work to combat violent crime and fraud.
“I promise you I will focus on our core mission, which is to uphold the rule of law fairly and impartially to keep this country safe and protect the rights of every citizen in this country,” Blanche said.
Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department has faced extraordinary pushback from judges across the country, several of whom have said that the typical deference that judges give U.S. government attorneys is no longer deserved.
The judges have criticized prosecutors for misstating facts, missing deadlines and, in some instances, presenting cases backed by flimsy evidence. In rare situations, the Justice Department has been accused of not following court orders.
In response, Trump and some of his allies have used incendiary language to dismiss judges whose rulings they opposed, suggesting they were incompetent and biased and, in some cases, that they should be impeached.
At a conservative legal event last year, Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, described the Justice Department as being “at war” with “rogue activist judges” who have restrained key planks of Trump’s agenda.
But on Thursday, he took a more diplomatic approach, saying that his Justice Department would not unduly attack judges.
“We will always respect the role of the judiciary,” Blanche said. Still, he added, “We’re not going to be intimidated out of enforcing the law or doing our jobs or executing the goals and priorities we have in this administration.”
Blanche’s speech was markedly different from one Trump delivered from the same podium at Justice Department headquarters soon after his inauguration last year.
In that speech, the president castigated the Justice Department’s career workforce that had served under the Biden administration, and many previous administrations, as “a corrupt group of hacks and radicals” who had unfairly prosecuted him.
“These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” Trump said at the time. “They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and Third World country.”
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