NYC Bar Sends Letter Opposing Todd Blanche’s AG Nomination, Calling Him ‘Unfit to Lead’

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The New York City Bar Association released a letter it sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing the nomination of Todd Blanche as Attorney General, denouncing him for his “misplaced loyalty” to President Donald Trump and numerous egregious ethical issues.

Blanche previously served as Deputy Attorney General during Pam Bondi’s tenure leading the Department of Justice, and became interim Attorney General after her ouster.

Keeping the gig on a permanent basis, however, requires Senate confirmation, and Blanche has drawn notably vocal opposition for multiple reasons, including his past work as Trump’s personal lawyer, his role in shepherding the pardons for the January 6 Capitol rioters, the handling of the Epstein files, and his controversial interview with Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell — not to mention her transfer shortly thereafter to Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Bryan in Bryan, Texas, a minimum-security facility that is not commonly used to house inmates convicted of crimes as serious as Maxwell’s. The move to this “cushy prison camp” was sharply criticized by several of Epstein and Maxwell’s victims.

Last week, more than 1,200 former DOJ employees signed a letter urging the Senate to not confirm Blanche. The signatories included those who had worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations and cited multiple “corruption and abuses” during Blanche’s time at the DOJ, including “vindictive prosecutions” of Trump’s political opponents, the “erasure of accountability for January 6,” and the “mishandling of the Epstein files.”

Other groups of attorneys and judges have sent their own letters opposing Blanche’s nomination. Lawyers for Good Government gathered more than 2,600 signatures from attorneys, and another coalition of 101 former judges have filed a complaint with the New York State Bar Association’s Attorney Grievance Commission requesting an investigation be initiated into Blanche for violation of the state bar rules of professional conduct.

The New York City Bar Association added its voice to the chorus of opposition in a letter signed by City Bar President Matthew Diller and Rule of Law Task Force Chair Susan J. Kohlmann and addressed to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-NY), the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, respectively.

In a statement on its website, the NYC Bar urged the committee to reject Blanche’s nomination and listed five categories of reasons why: “politically motivated prosecutions, violations of constitutional rights and court orders, misplaced loyalty to the President, the weakening of the Department of Justice, and questions of professional ethics.”

Blanche “has taken actions that we believe make him unfit to lead an ethical and independent department of justice that is essential to our nation’s democracy,” the letter said. “Mr. Blanche’s record—particularly the actions he has undertaken as Deputy Attorney General and Acting Attorney General—conclusively demonstrates his lack of commitment to the integrity, professionalism and independence that the Senate should require and the American people should expect of the highest law enforcement official in the land.”

The role of Attorney General is supposed to illustrate America’s “commitment to the rule of law and equal justice under the law,” the letter continued, and whoever serves in that role “must therefore be a lawyer of both demonstrated professional excellence and unquestionable ethical standards that assure his commitment to justice and loyalty to the United States Constitution, and not to either his personal interests or those of the President who nominated him.”

“Todd Blanche fails to meet this standard,” the letter bluntly declared. “Despite his formal credentials, Mr. Blanche’s actions, both as Deputy Attorney General and as Acting Attorney General, have repeatedly demonstrated that his primary loyalty is not to the United States Constitution or the rule of law but to President Donald J. Trump, whom Mr. Blanche previously represented as a private attorney and whose personal interests he has continued to protect. As a result, his actions have been detrimental to the Department of Justice and the rule of law. Specifically, Mr. Blanche has compromised the integrity and independence of the Department he has been nominated to lead.”

Among the examples in the letter that the NYC bar viewed as disqualifying for Blanche were the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey on “flimsy” and “patently frivolous charges,” repeated violations of court orders, “willful and bad faith refusal” to comply with discovery requests, and a lengthy section delving into Blanche’s “misplaced loyalty” to Trump.

“The Attorney General’s client is not the President individually but the government of the United States and, by extension, the people of the United States,” the letter said. “Put another way, when the Attorney General is sworn into office, he swears allegiance to the United States Constitution, not to the President who nominated him to his office. His fiduciary duty as a lawyer, therefore, is to the United States government and people of the United States, not the President, whether in his role as president or in his personal capacity.”

This “misplaced loyalty” was revealed in Blanche’s “leading and undisclosed role in seeking to protect President Trump individually from unflattering or potentially incriminating disclosures in connection with the criminal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein” and with his “orchestration” of the purported “settlement” of a lawsuit Trump and his family filed against the IRS to create a $1.776 billion “weaponization fund” that was swiftly denounced as a “slush fund.”

On Monday, Judge Kathleen Williams with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, an Obama appointee, nullified the settlement, finding it was a “collusive”lawsuit and an“attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.”

The judge even went so far as to refer several of the attorneys involved to their state bar associations for disciplinary proceedings, and ordered the clerk of the court to send her order to the New York Bar, where “disciplinary proceedings are currently ongoing” against Blanche.

The bar’s letter further excoriated Blanche for his detrimental effect on the DOJ itself:

During Mr. Blanche’s tenure, some 16,000 employees have left the Department, including FBI agents, investigators, analysts and some 4,000 lawyers. Some have left because of their belief that Mr. Blanche has eroded the professional standards and independence of the Department. Others have been terminated because they worked on matters, including the January 6 insurrection, that the President criticized, because they were related to the President’s perceived enemies, resisted short-circuiting immigration cases, declined to bring vindictive charges, were truthful in court, or were simply discouraged by the Department’s new reluctance to enforce environmental, civil rights, public corruption, drug trafficking or tax laws.Mr. Blanche himself boasted about the firings, noting that the administration had “cleaned house.”

…As a result, in less than two years, the Department of Justice’s credibility with the courts and with the public, established over the course of decades, has been shattered. Federal judges now frequently call out Department of Justice attorneys for false, incomplete and misleading statements in court. The impacts of this hollowing-out of the Department of Justice’s professional capability radiate through the federal government and, in a broader sense, throughout American society, with judges regularly rebuking lack of professionalism by DOJ attorneys and grand juries refusing to hand down indictments.

The letter concluded by arguing that any of the reasons listed therein should be sufficient grounds to disqualify Blanche from serving as Attorney General. “Together, they demonstrate that, whatever his prior experience or formal credentials, Mr. Blanche is unfit to lead the U.S. Department of Justice. As the group of 100 retired judges said in their grievance complaint, ‘The country deserves an Attorney General who is above reproach and serves the country without fear or favor, without placing party or personal interest above the law of the nation.’ Mr. Blanche does not meet that test.”

Read the full letter from the New York City Bar Association here.

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