Just days after the 2018 midterm elections, Donald Trump fired his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and made Matthew Whitaker the acting AG. This was not exactly an improvement: Sessions had failed in the role, but Whitaker was a ridiculous choice to serve, however briefly, as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.

Almost eight years later, the president has fired another failed attorney general, Pam Bondi, and in keeping with his preferred model, he made another outlandish choice to serve as an acting AG. NBC News reported:

Todd Blanche, whom President Donald Trump named to temporarily lead the Justice Department after Pam Bondi was ousted Thursday, has held two critical positions in his last two jobs.

Most recently, he served for more than a year as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 spot overseeing the department’s daily operations. But just as crucially, he was also Trump’s personal attorney.

So we’ve gone from a lawyer who acted like a Trump defense attorney to a lawyer who was literally a Trump defense attorney.

After the president became a convicted felon almost two years ago, it was Blanche who helped represent him. (Blanche might very well have also lost the criminal cases brought by then-special counsel Jack Smith, but as you may recall, those prosecutions were short-circuited by Trump’s 2024 election victory.)

Mimi Rocah, who worked with Blanche in the Southern District of New York, told NBC News she was originally hopeful that he’d do well in a leadership role at the Justice Department. She’s since learned otherwise.

Blanche had “shown in his role as deputy AG that he is willing to act more as Donald Trump’s defense attorney than a justice official who defends his employees, seeks justice and tries to uphold the rule of law,” Rocah said, adding, “I expect nothing different from him in this elevated role.”

Those are reasonable expectations.

During his tenure as the nation’s second-highest law enforcement official, Blanche didn’t exactly cover himself in glory, as his handling of the cases involving former New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell demonstrated.

But that’s just the start. Blanche has been accused of shutting down enforcement against crypto companies while holding extensive crypto investments, he’s undermined his own credibility with highly suspect claims during television interviews, and his comments about the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case are now being used by Abrego Garcia’s defense attorneys.

As for the Epstein case, NBC News reported, “Blanche also took the lead on the Justice Department’s release of its Epstein files after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. He announced in December that the Justice Department would release hundreds of thousands of files, and then it released only a small fraction of that amount.”

Perhaps most importantly, The New York Times noted that Blanche, who oversees day-to-day operations at the DOJ, “has overseen the destruction of the department’s traditional norms of independence from the White House, often treating Mr. Trump not as a chief executive who could benefit from his legal advice but rather as a loudmouthed client whose orders must be followed.”

Bondi’s departure is welcome news for those who support the rule of law, but it’s tough to be optimistic about her acting successor.

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