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Todd Blanche’s selection as deputy attorney general and later interim attorney general was a clear indication that Donald Trump intended to turn the Justice Department into his own personal law firm. Blanche represented Trump across his multiple criminal trials and also worked for other Trump associates like Paul Manafort. As deputy attorney general, Blanche was instrumental in the administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and even allowed Epstein's co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, to move to a more comfortable prison camp just days after he interviewed her. The Watergate scandal made clear that the independence of the DOJ was critical to prevent presidential abuses of power. Trump’s disregard for that lesson could have dangerous consequences. |
July 23, 2025: Blanche Met With Epstein’s Co-Conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, And Her Attorney At The U.S. Attorney’s Office In Tallahassee, Florida. According to CBS News, “Todd Blanche, the second highest-ranking Justice Department official, met with Ghislaine Maxwell at the U.S. attorney's office in Tallahassee on Thursday to discuss convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. David Oscar Markus, Maxwell's lawyer, declined to comment 'on the substance' of the meeting, but told reporters outside the office that 'there were a lot of questions and we went all day.’” [CBS News, 7/24/25]
December 2025: Blanche Defended Meeting With Maxwell, Saying, “Nobody Ever Asked Her Questions About What She Knew.” According to POLITICO, “Blanche also defended the decision to speak with Maxwell over two days in July, noting that the Department of Justice had also met with victims and victims’ rights groups as recently as Thursday. 'Nobody ever talked to her. Nobody ever asked her questions about what she knew. So when she said she had something she wanted to say — notwithstanding the fact that she had been convicted — of course we went and talked to her,' he said. 'Imagine if we didn’t talk to her. Imagine she said: I have a story to tell and I would like to talk to the government and I said no. The same outrage would be directed at this department for not speaking with her.’” [POLITICO, 12/21/25]
July 31, 2025: Maxwell Was Moved From A Low-Security Prison In Tallahassee, Florida, To A Prison Camp In Bryan, Texas. According to The Associated Press, "Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas as her criminal case generates renewed public attention. The federal Bureau of Prisons said Friday that Maxwell had been transferred to Bryan, Texas, but did not explain the circumstances. Her attorney confirmed the move but also declined to discuss the reasons for it. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She had been held at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, until her transfer to the prison camp in Texas, where other inmates include Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah of ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.’” [Associated Press, 7/31/25]
December 2025: Blanche Defended Moving Maxwell To The Prison Camp, Citing “Scrutiny” Of Her And Her “Suffering Numerous And Numerous Threats.” According to POLITICO, "Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the decision to move convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison earlier this year, citing threats against her as the reason for the transfer. In a Sunday morning interview on 'Meet the Press' with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Blanche said the decision to transfer Maxwell to a less restrictive facility was made by the Bureau of Prisons, adding that 'every decision that they make lands on my desk to the extent it needs to.’ ‘At the time that I met Miss Maxwell, there was a tremendous amount of scrutiny and publicity toward her, and the institution she was in, she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life,' Blanche said. He did not elaborate on the threats. Maxwell was moved from a prison in Florida to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas this summer shortly after she met with Blanche as part of the Trump administration’s effort to quiet backlash over its handling of the federal government’s documents related to the late Jeffrey Epstein. " [POLITICO, 12/21/25]
January 2026: Blanche Celebrated DOJ’s “Rigorous” Process To Redact The Names Of Epstein’s Victims, But Hours Later It Was Discovered By Some Of Those Victims And Reporters That Their Names Were Visible. According to Vanity Fair, “Around 11 a.m. on a Friday in late January, a solemn Todd Blanche, the United States deputy attorney general, stood in front of a poster-sized Department of Justice seal—the word 'Justice' obscured by his body—and declared that the department had done what was promised and required: The Epstein files were to be released. Blanche boasted about the department’s 'rigorous' redactions process ahead of the documents’ publication, 'undertaken to protect victims against any clearly unwarranted invasion of their personal privacy.’ There were indeed places where the names of Epstein associates were redacted within the same set of documents in which an alleged victim’s name, image, or personal identifying information were left exposed. A 69-page Drug Enforcement Agency memo dated May 18, 2015—which revealed that Epstein was the subject of a major DEA drug trafficking and money-laundering investigation—included redactions of the names of 14 other 'targets' of the investigation. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the surname of a survivor was left unredacted, enabling news outlets to identify her. Within a single JPMorgan Chase investigative file, a victim’s banking information, credit card numbers, and routing details were initially visible to the public in over 50 separate instances. The names of the wealthy, powerful men being discussed—including alleged perpetrators—were entirely blacked out.” [Vanity Fair, 3/30/26]
January 2026: Blanche Likened Himself To Epstein Victims Who Were Frustrated With The Judicial Process Because, He Said, For Years “Nobody Even (Discussed) Epstein, And Then All Of A Sudden It Was All Anybody Would Talk About.” According to a transcript from CNN, “UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Deputy Attorney General Blanche thank you for your time. Two questions for you. Number one, pushing politics aside and everyone else aside, some of the victims of Epstein have expressed frustration with the entire process. I want to give you the opportunity to speak directly to them. BLANCHE: Well, I don't -- I don't know what you're what you're speaking to. I mean, if there's frustration with quote, the entire process same here. I mean, you have a situation where for many, many years, nobody even breathed a word about Jeffrey Epstein, and then all of a sudden it was all anybody would talk about going into the last spring and summer, culminating in the passage of the Transparency Act. And President Trump has said for years, what I think everybody will find to be exactly true, which is detailing his relationship and lack thereof with Mr. Epstein, and what he thought about Mr. Epstein and notwithstanding what the department has been saying for a very long time, we're still where we are today. ” [CNN, 1/30/26]
February 2026: Blanche Said He Did Not “Appreciate (Questioning) Being Directed Towards Donald J. Trump” About His Name Appearing In The Epstein Files. According to a transcript from CNN, “BASH: Among these new files is a list compiled by the FBI just in August of numerous salacious, and to be really clear, unverified allegations about President Trump. Why did the FBI create this list last year? And have all of these claims been investigated by the DOJ? BLANCHE: So, look, it's not about President Trump. It's about a ton of people, multiple, multiple people that were -- quote – ‘in the Epstein files.’ And what I think folks will see when they review the materials we released is that there have been hundreds of calls made to the FBI where allegations are made by either anonymous individuals or people who are very quickly determined to not be credible, whether it's the nature of what they're saying or the fact they won't provide any information or corroboration, and that's part of the Epstein files. […] BLANCHE: So that's what that's about. I don't appreciate it being directed towards Donald J. Trump, because that pushes a narrative that is completely false. It's -- there are all kinds of people that are mentioned in the -- quote – ‘Epstein files’ that we had to look at and run down.” [CNN, 2/1/26]
February 2026: Blanche Said Defended The “Extraordinary” Work DOJ Did On Sex-Trafficking Cases While Questioning “Whether There's Anybody There That We Can Go After” For The Epstein Case. According to (source), “TODD BLANCHE, U.S. DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, look, I can't talk about any investigations, but I will say the following, which is that, in July, the Department of Justice said that we had reviewed the files, the -- quote -- ‘Epstein files’ and there was nothing in there that allowed us to prosecute anybody. We then released over 3.5 million pieces of paper, which the entire world can look at now and see if we got it wrong. And so it's not performative. And I respectfully disagree with that statement. We were ordered to do so by Congress and then by the president of the United States, and that's what we did. And let me -- I said it on Friday. This Justice Department, the FBI, DHS, we have gone after more sex traffickers, more child pornographers, more men who have done harm to children and young women than any administration in history. And so we need to separate those two ideas, the fact that there's the Epstein files and whether there's anybody there that we can go after, and the work that we are doing every day, which is extraordinary, and we will continue to do that. ” [CNN, 2/1/26]
February 2026: Blanche Said Of The Epstein Files, “DOJ Is Hiding Nothing.” In a post on X, Todd Blanche wrote, “The document you cite has numerous victim names. We have just unredacted Les Wexner's name from this document, but his name already appears in the files thousands of times. DOJ is hiding nothing.” The post quoted a post by U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie questioning why the U.S. Department of Justice redacted a certain document in the Epstein files. [X – Todd Blanche, 2/9/26]
February 2026: Blanche Said, “It’s Not A Crime To Party With Mr. Epstein,” And, “It’s Not A Crime To Email With Mr. Epstein.” According to The Hill, “Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Monday that there is a chance anyone who attended parties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could be prosecuted but noted that 'it isn’t a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.' 'Well, look, I’ll never say no, and we will always investigate any evidence of misconduct, but as you know, it’s not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein,' Blanche told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. 'So as horrible as it — it’s not a crime to email with Mr. Epstein.’ ‘Some of these men may have done horrible things, and if we have evidence that allows us to prosecute them, you better believe we will,’ he continued. 'But it’s also the kind of thing that the American people need to understand that it isn’t a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.’” [The Hill, 2/3/26]
Todd Blanche Was A “Key Member” Of Trump’s Legal Team And Represented In Multiple Criminal Cases. According to The Hill, "Former President Trump is expected to be accompanied by a key member of his legal team when he appears at a courthouse for his Tuesday arraignment on federal charges related to his handling of classified documents: attorney Todd Blanche. Blanche, who also represents Trump in the New York criminal case involving an alleged 2016 hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, is leading Trump’s legal team as the former president makes his highly publicized appearance at federal court in Miami." [The Hill, 6/12/23]
Todd Blanche Has Represented Former Trump Campaign Staffer Paul Manafort And Associate Of Trump Advisor Rudy Giuliani. According to The Hill, "He was part of the legal team representing Paul Manafort, who worked on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In 2019, charges were dropped in a New York case against Manafort, who was already serving more than a seven-year prison sentence after being convicted in two cases. Blanche also represented Igor Fruman, an associate of former Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who received a plea deal in a case involving campaign finance violations." [The Hill, 6/12/23]
Adam And Daniel Kaplan Sued Todd Blanche For Forging Their Signatures And Overbilling. According to Raw Story, "Todd Blanche and his former law firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, are being sued for malpractice by twin brothers Adam Kaplan and Daniel Kaplan, who allege Blanche and Cadwalader forged their signatures on a retainer agreement and 'severely' overbilled them while they were the subject of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe. The Kaplan brothers also reportedly allege their former attorneys are now refusing to turn over their case file to their new lawyers." [Raw Story, 6/14/23]