WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump elevated Todd Blanche from deputy attorney general to acting U.S. Attorney General, placing his former personal defense lawyer at the helm of the Justice Department. Blanche had served as the department's second-in-command under Attorney General Pam Bondi, managing day-to-day operations.

Trump described Blanche as a talented and respected legal mind in a social media post. As deputy attorney general, Blanche oversaw the release of government files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Before entering government, Blanche served as Trump's lead defense attorney across multiple criminal cases. He represented Trump in the New York hush money case that ended in Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts, in the 2020 election interference case in Washington, and in the Florida case accusing Trump of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Blanche left the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 2023 to join Trump's defense team, just before Trump's arraignment in the hush money case. "I have been asked to represent Trump in the recently charged DA case, and after much thought/consideration, I have decided it is the best thing for me to do and an opportunity I should not pass up," Blanche wrote in an email announcing his departure from Cadwalader.

Blanche's defense team delayed the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith until after the 2024 presidential election. Smith subsequently abandoned both cases after Trump's election victory, citing a Justice Department policy that sitting presidents cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office.

Ten days before Trump returned to office, Blanche sat alongside him at Mar-a-Lago and appeared by video as a Manhattan judge imposed no punishment on Trump in the hush money case. During the proceeding, Blanche told the judge that the majority of American voters believed the case should not have been brought and that the 2024 election results served as a verdict on the case.

Before representing Trump, Blanche built a career spanning both public service and private practice. Originally from the Denver suburbs, he completed his undergraduate studies at American University in Washington, D.C., then attended Brooklyn Law School at night while working as a paralegal at the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. He graduated cum laude.

Blanche served as a law clerk for federal judges Denny Chin and Joseph Bianco before spending eight years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. During that tenure, he spent two years as co-chief of the office's violent crimes unit, overseeing about two dozen prosecutors handling killings, kidnappings, and other violent crimes.

Blanche left the U.S. attorney's office in 2014 to join the Manhattan office of WilmerHale. In September 2017, he became a partner in the White Collar Defense and Investigations practice at Cadwalader. In 2019, he represented Paul Manafort and succeeded in getting a mortgage fraud case against him dismissed in New York court, arguing that the case amounted to double jeopardy because it was too similar to a federal case that had led to Manafort's imprisonment.