Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche looks on, on the day he is to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be attorney general, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 15, 2026.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Todd Blanche, who first drew national attention as a criminal defense lawyer for President Donald Trump, faces a Senate Judiciary hearing Wednesday to review his nomination by the Republican president to become the attorney general of the U.S.
Blanche, 51, has served as acting attorney general since early April, when Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi over her handling of issues related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump in a Truth Social post on Tuesday praised Blanche, calling him a “great lawyer, always very fair,” and writing, “every Republican Senator should vote to CONFIRM Todd Blanche, ASAP.”
But Bondi’s departure did not mean controversy over the DOJ’s conduct in connection with the release of documents related to Epstein — and other actions by the department with Blanche’s involvement — has gone away.
Democrats, who are the minority on the committee, are expected to grill Blanche on his decision in January when he was deputy attorney general not to publicly release millions of pages about Epstein after initially disclosing more than 3 million pages. Under a law passed by Congress in November, the DOJ is required to release all documents it has about Epstein.
A group of Epstein victims this week released a video urging the Senate to block Blanche as attorney general because their personal information was made public by the DOJ in the release of files even though that information should have been redacted.
The DOJ, in a Jan. 30 statement about the final release of the files, said those that were withheld fell into several categories, including duplicate documents from different investigations and those withheld under certain legal privileges.
Blanche is also certain to face questions about his decision to create a $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund for the DOJ to compensate people who were purportedly the victims of prosecutorial overreach by the Justice Department.
The fund, which Blanche said he canceled in the face of sharp criticism from Republican senators and Democrats, was part of an out-of-court settlement of a suit filed by Trump against the IRS over the leak of his tax records. While Blanche has said the fund won’t be created, Trump has floated the idea of reviving its creation.
That settlement included giving Trump, his family members and related business entities effective immunity from audits, prosecution or regulatory enforcement action by the IRS for tax returns filed up to the date of the settlement in May.
On Monday, a Miami federal judge in a scathing order said Trump had sued the IRS for an “improper purpose,” to obtain the appearance of “judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.” The judge ordered that a copy of her order be sent to the New York State Bar Association, of which Blanche is a member, and which is considering a pending ethics complaint against him.
A DOJ spokesperson, in a statement to CNBC, said, “There was no collusion in this case, and the partisan judge who speculated otherwise has disregarded decades of precedent.”
“The plaintiffs did not receive any money and were barred from receiving any from the now-defunct Anti-Weaponization Fund,” the spokesperson said.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that he had a 30-minute meeting with Blanche earlier in the day that included a discussion about the fund.
Durbin said Blanche told him: “‘What more can I do? What more can I say? I made a mistake. I don’t want to see the weaponization fund go forward.'”
Durbin said he then asked Blanche, “Why don’t you put it in writing? Do something so it’s a credible statement by you?”
The senator recounted that Blanche said he would be willing to work with Congress to codify that the fund can’t be created.
“It seemed like a very weak defense,” Durbin said.
CNBC has requested comment from the DOJ about that account.
Another area of controversy Democrats are expected to focus on is the federal prosecutions of people Trump considers enemies — former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, last fall. That office is overseen by the DOJ.
Both of those cases, whose allegations were strongly denied by both defendants, were dismissed by a judge in November after he ruled that the interim U.S. attorney who lodged the case was invalidly appointed.
But Comey was indicted again in April in the Eastern District of North Carolina federal court on counts alleging he threatened to kill Trump by posting an image on Instagram of seashells forming the message “86 47.”
The DOJ spokesperson, in a statement to CNBC said that both James and Comey “were charged by federal grand juries for serious felony offenses.”
“Offenders cannot be exempt from being charged for these serious crimes just because of who they are,” the spokesperson said.
— CNBC’s Justin Papp contributed to this article.
