Todd Blanche, who has been serving as US Attorney General since April of this year, was confirmed to the post by the US Senate on Saturday, August 8. RTVI provides information about the career path of the new Minister of Justice, who previously worked as the personal lawyer of President Donald Trump.
Through natives of the USSR – to Trump
Todd Wallace Blanche, 52, a native of Denver, Colorado, began his career in the Department of Justice. During his studies, he interned in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia in the American capital, and then worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York for eight years, where he investigated violent crimes.
It was his move to New York, where Blanche completed his law studies at Brooklyn Law School, that subsequently allowed him to meet Trump. In 2014, Blanche left the prosecutor's office for the law firm Wilmerhale, and in 2017 he joined Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, the oldest law firm on Wall Street.
In subsequent years, the lawyer began collaborating with a number of figures in Trump's orbit, notably the former chairman of his first presidential campaign, Paul Manafort. Blanche successfully got mortgage fraud charges against him dropped. The lawyer also represented the interests of Soviet-born businessman Igor Fruman, an associate of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who is close to Trump, and lawyer Boris Epstein.
It was Moscow-born Epstein who advised Blanche to Trump in 2023 when he was looking for a new lawyer to defend him in the case of payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford). Blanche joined the Republican's team and also defended him in federal cases of improper storage of government records and election interference.
In the Daniels case, Trump was eventually found guilty, but because of his election victory, no punishment was imposed. Federal cases against the Republican were dismissed for the same reasons.
The office of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft did not appreciate Blanche's decision to cooperate with Trump, as a result of which the lawyer decided to leave it and found his own. Following Trump, he also changed his party registration from Democratic to Republican and officially moved to Florida.
Under the shadow of another Epstein
Blanche returned to the Justice Department in 2025, when Trump, again heading the White House, proposed him for the post of Deputy Attorney General of the United States. The appointment also required Senate approval, which the lawyer received with a 52-46 Republican majority.
The work of both Blanche and Attorney General Pam Bondi at the Justice Department was marked primarily by the scandal surrounding the figure of another Epstein – financier and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in 2019 after his arrest in the case of sex trafficking of minors.
Due to the abundance of conspiracy theories surrounding the defendant, the Trump team promised to declassify the case, but unexpectedly abandoned plans in July 2025, citing the presence of so-called child porn in the materials.
Widespread public outcry led to the passage of legislation in Congress in November of that year mandating the release of the Epstein Files, which began in December but ultimately disappointed many with the abundance of elements that remained classified.
Blanche, in turn, during this period attracted criticism from Trump opponents by meeting with Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. The contacts were presented as an attempt to identify other members of the sex offender's “network”, but the list was never published. The transcript of Blanche's conversation with the criminal was released in edited form, and Maxwell herself was transferred to a more comfortable prison after the meetings.
Amid ongoing interest in Epstein and his possible ties to Trump, Bondi lost her position as attorney general in April, and the topic later became one of the key issues in the Senate's consideration of Blanche's candidacy as her permanent replacement.
A number of senators, not only Democrats, were also not happy with the idea of Trump and Blanche to create a $1.8 billion fund using budget funds to pay those they consider to have suffered from wrongful prosecution during the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden.
Republican Senators John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (North Carolina) protested Blanche's out-of-court agreement between Trump and the IRS to cancel audits of his companies (the deal is being challenged in court by the tax union).
Amid the controversy, Trump suggested in late July that he would temporarily withdraw Blanche's nomination, but the lawyer eventually secured enough votes in August. To do this, he needed to issue a written order to cancel the initiative to create a compensation fund.
Blanche was confirmed as the new US Attorney General on August 8 in a 50-49 Senate vote. All Democratic senators and two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine), spoke out against the nomination.
