[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on October 22, 2026.]

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on August 16, 2026, Attorney General Todd Blanche admitted that he has abandoned the principle that has guided the Justice Department since Watergate. Asked if he would pledge to act independently of the White House, he said:

“No, I’m not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should make that pledge.”

He is tragically wrong. Blanche has forgotten that he works for all Americans, not the single man he refers to as “the boss.”

In the near term, he’s angling to thwart the midterm elections in which Republicans are poised to lose Trump’s death grip on Congress. In the long run, the nation will bear the consequences of his weaponization of the Justice Department for years to come.

Blanche’s Pursuit of Trump’s Retribution Agenda

Attorney General Pam Bondi failed in her valiant efforts to satisfy Trump’s obsession to punish all of his perceived enemies. Her most visible failures involved former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Career prosecutors at the Department of Justice found the evidence insufficient to indict Comey for posting a photograph of seashells forming “86 47” on a North Carolina beach. U.S. Attorney Eric Siebert – whom Trump had nominated – recommended against charging him.

Career prosecutors likewise informed Siebert that the evidence was insufficient to indict James, who had won a civil fraud case against Trump and his organization.

Trump didn’t care that experienced prosecutors found the claims against his targets wanting. In a social media post that he intended as a private message to then-Attorney General Bondi, Trump told her to get moving against Comey and James. Trump urged Bondi to give the job to Lindsay Halligan, an unqualified White House staff attorney whose prior experience consisted primarily of defending insurance companies against homeowners and corporate plaintiffs.

Bondi obeyed, and Halligan used dubious tactics to obtain indictments of Comey and James. But a federal court dismissed the indictments, ruling that Halligan’s appointment had been illegal from the outset.

Two weeks after dismissal of James’ indictment, the Justice Department tried again. In a remarkable rebuke, the grand jury refused.

On April 1, 2026, Trump fired Bondi.

With Bondi’s departure, then-Deputy Attorney General Blanche – Trump’s personal defense counsel between his two presidential terms – became acting AG. Before the month ended, Blanche had secured Comey’s re-indictment.

Five weeks later, Trump said that he would nominate Blanche as Bondi’s permanent replacement. On August 8, 2026, he was confirmed on a 50-49 Senate vote.

Long before his confirmation, Blanche had moved quickly to please “his boss.” Here’s a sample:

· In July 2025, Blanche was involved with senior White House staff in the Situation Room to develop strategies minimizing the ongoing damage to Trump personally from the Epstein files.

· In March 2026, he boasted that the Justice Department had rid itself of more than 200 career prosecutors and FBI agents – anyone “who had anything to do with prosecuting Trump.”

· In May 2026, he alone signed the document that – contrary to federal law – gave Trump and his family immunity from IRS investigations in return for settling Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS that a federal judge found to be a sham. Apparently, Blanche ignored his prior pledge to recuse himself from Trump-related matters.

Blanche’s Pursuit of Trump’s Attack on Democracy

Since his August confirmation, Blanche has promoted Trump’s assault on the democratic process:

· Despite the uniform rejection of the DOJ’s position by 26 federal courts – including Trump-appointed judges – he has continued to pursue lawsuits seeking state voter rolls as part of Trump’s effort to subvert the upcoming midterms.

· In September, he asserted without evidence that “common sense” proved what is demonstrably false – that mail-in voting presents a greater risk of fraud than in-person voting with identification. That frivolous argument is another element of Trump’s crusade to undermine public confidence in the democratic process.

· In October, he relaxed longstanding DOJ rules limiting presidential appointees in the Justice Department from participation in political gatherings. By then, he had already hit the campaign trail for Republicans and spoken at the party’s midterm convention.

And most recently, Blanche has taken the pre-emptive effort to discredit the results of the upcoming midterms to new levels:

· In violation of the Justice Department’s 60-day rule against actions that could affect the outcome of an approaching election, the Justice Department executed a search of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)’s home only 22 days before the election in which she is on the ballot.

· In violation of federal and state law (and probably a prior court order), DOJ sued California after demanding that it use the federal government’s unreliable database to purge 20,000 voters from the state’s rolls. But as California’s secretary of state explained in rejecting DOJ’s pre-suit, 48-hour ultimatum:

“To give just one example, in a similar incident in the State of Nevada, DHS initially alleged that Nevada’s voter roll included nearly 16,000 potential non-citizens. However, after working with the State of Nevada, DHS officials failed to establish that a single non-citizen was on the voter rolls.”

Blanche’s lawsuit is another Trumpian effort to promote public doubt about the integrity of the mid-term elections and lay the groundwork for baseless post-election challenges.

Blanche’s Reckoning Has Only Begun

Blanche’s actions are already costing him:

· He has been the subject of ethics complaints relating to his work at DOJ.

· U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams made a direct judicial referral of Blanche to the New York bar – where he is licensed – based on his “troubling testimony” and the questionable legality of the Trump-IRS immunity agreement that he alone signed.

· Federal courts across the country have blasted Blanche’s Department of Justice as no longer worthy of the “presumption of regularity.” Federal judges no longer trust DOJ attorneys to tell them the truth.

None of this fazes Blanche. Perhaps his ambition was to be Trump’s latest “Roy Cohn” – Trump’s infamous early mentor who rose to notoriety as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-WI) chief legal counsel during the 1950s “Red Scare.” If so, he has succeeded.

But Blanche might consider this: Trump is a fickle friend who can quickly become a fierce foe. And eventually, Cohn was disbarred.