Todd Blanche

At his confirmation hearing he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the "anti-weaponization" fund — $1.8 billion created by the settlement of the president's own suit against the Internal Revenue Service, to compensate people claiming they had been wrongly targeted — was "a moot issue... The weaponization fund is dead." He conceded the settlement document remains enforceable and could be revived. Senators of both parties questioned why it had not been amended in court and whether Department officials, himself among them, had broken ethical rules; a federal judge had earlier found the president brought the suit "for an improper purpose". At the same hearing, asked by Senator John Kennedy whether he and the president were friends, he answered: "I'm his lawyer. Was his lawyer." He had been the president's personal defense counsel before taking office. Commentators treated the correction of tense as revealing; what is established here is the exchange itself, which is on the record, and not what he meant by it. He was confirmed on August 8, 2026.

Said as Acting Attorney General of the United States, on Fox News, that there is a "ton of evidence" the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Pressed on why the Department had not produced it, he named none, saying instead that "we have multiple investigations going on in Arizona, in Fulton County, Georgia". No such evidence has been produced by the Department before or since. He had been the president's personal defense lawyer in the New York criminal trial.