Todd Blanche declines to pledge independence from White House

Michael Sainato Sun, August 16, 2026 at 4:34 PM UTC

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Todd Blanche, the US attorney general, speaks before Donald Trump at the David Mack Center for Training and Intelligence in Garden City, New York, on 14 August.Photograph: Yuki Iwamura/AP

US attorney general Todd Blanche on Sunday declined to assure that the federal justice department he helms would always act independently of the White House and Donald Trump.

“No, I’m not going to pledge that,” he said when asked about the topic by NBC’s Meet the Press host, Kristen Welker. “And no attorney general should ever pledge that.”

Blanche also claimed Trump would never ask him to do something that crosses an ethical or legal line – after the president dismissed his predecessor, Pam Bondi, having become frustrated over insufficient action from the justice department against Trump’s political foes.

“The president will never ask me to do something unethical or legal or illegal,” Blanche told Welker. “He never has. He never will. And no, I have – I swore to the constitution of the United States, like every cabinet secretary has done, and like every attorney general before me has done.

“And so, this narrative that’s mostly pushed by the left and pushed by the media that the president’s going to pull me aside and ask me to do something illegal is completely a false narrative, not true, will not happen and hasn’t happened.”

Related: Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, sworn in as US attorney general

In response to his demurring on the questions of always acting independently of the White House, Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, wrote on social media that Blanche’s stated position was “an appalling departure” from the justice department’s mission after the Watergate scandal that prompted Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency in 1974.

The justice department, “as we once knew it, is no more”, McQuade wrote. “Blanche has turned it into Trump’s private law firm. What a complete disgrace.”

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Blanche’s comments to Welker on Sunday came days after he was only narrowly confirmed by the US Senate in a 50-49 vote to succeed Bondi, with all Democrats voting against him. He previously served as Trump’s criminal defense lawyer when a New York state jury convicted Trump between his two presidencies of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

In April, Blanche said he would tell Trump, “I love you, sir,” if the president decided to fire him and nominate someone else to replace Bondi.

Blanche, meanwhile, in December defended moving Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted child sexual trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein associate, to a minimum-security prison. And Blanche has also continued facing scrutiny over his handling of the so-called Epstein files and his treatment of those victimized by the sex-trafficking network built by Epstein.

While speaking with Welker on Sunday, Blanche also defended Trump’s pardoning of 1,500 supporters who were convicted of attacking the US Capitol toward the end of his first presidency in early 2021.

“I’m not opining or in any way saying what President Trump did was wrong,” Blanche said when asked about the pardons, which included more than 170 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers. “That is the president’s right.”

Blanche declined to say whether any of the pardoned attackers might still receive settlements from the federal government – though they attorney general also claimed a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund for allies whom Trump considered to be unfairly prosecuted was dead.

“Well, anybody can file a claim against the federal government, not just anybody associated with [the Capitol attack],” Blanche said. “I’m not going to sit here and say on a news program whether a litigation that may or may not happen will result in money. I can’t do that.”

He also affirmed the justice department would not drop “election integrity” efforts despite more than 20 consecutive court defeats connected to efforts to try to force states to turn over voter rolls ahead of the midterm elections in November, when the president’s Republican party is projected to lose seats in Congress and favored to lose the majority in the US House.

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Source: “AOL Breaking”