On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he plans to nominate Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to run the Justice Department on a permanent basis. That decision is not surprising given Blanche's demonstrated eagerness to please his boss. But that same tendency is worrisome if you think the attorney general should pursue justice rather than the president's personal grievances.
Blanche, a former federal prosecutor, represented Trump in several criminal cases, and his dogged advocacy earned him an appointment as deputy attorney general. But last year, despite the expectation that he would continue acting as the president's personal lawyer, Blanche reportedly resisted some of the steps that Trump took in pursuing vendettas against his political opponents. In September, The New York Times reported that Blanche and Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, had "quietly questioned" the appointment of Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist with no prosecutorial experience, as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
