Todd Blanche hit with state bar complaint backed by 101 former judges

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s principal focus in recent weeks has been lining up support on Capitol Hill ahead of his upcoming Senate confirmation hearings, with a specific focus on winning over GOP skeptics. But Donald Trump’s controversial former defense attorney has more troubles than lining up 51 votes.

As this week got underway, Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers Defending American Democracy and a group of 101 former federal and state judges filed a complaint against Blanche with the New York State Bar, which included a formal request for an ethics investigation.

The 73-page complaint specifically focused on three areas of alleged misconduct:

Blanche’s role in orchestrating the creation of a $1.776 billion compensation fund, widely panned as a “slush fund,” and an IRS audit shield for the president and his family.
Blanche’s role in “abusing the investigative and prosecutorial powers” of the Justice Department to target the president’s perceived political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey.
Blanche supervising the DOJ’s “flawed response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, including the disclosure of thousands of records containing sensitive victim information.”

Time will tell what, if anything, comes of the complaint, but as the process moves forward, it’s worth pausing to note just how frequently former judges have become prominent and influential critics of the president and his team.

In early November, for example, Judge Mark L. Wolf, a Reagan-appointed jurist, resigned from the federal bench in order to give himself the freedom to warn the public about the threats posed by Trump.

“The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable,” he explained.

Three weeks later, The Washington Post conducted interviews with a dozen former judges and one soon-to-be-retired judge who condemned the president’s attacks on the judiciary — with one going so far as to say, “All you have to do is look back on what occurred in Nazi Germany.”

Last month, meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered Trump to address allegations that he committed fraud on the court after he withdrew his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. Williams said she was spurred to act in response to a request filed two days earlier by 35 former federal judges calling on her to reopen the case and look into whether the out-of-court settlement was “a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the Court.”

Traditionally, when judges step down from the bench, they focus on writing or teaching among their retirement activities. In the Trump era, things sure are different.

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