More than 1,200 Justice Department alums urged the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter released Tuesday to reject Todd Blanche’s nomination to serve as the country’s top federal prosecutor.

The Justice Connection, a network of fired DOJ employees created to support the department’s career prosecutors who they say have been targeted by the Trump administration, released the letter one week before the kickoff of Blanche’s highly anticipated two-day confirmation hearing before the Senate panel.

“Regardless of how we joined the department, every one of us took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the occupant of the White House,” the former prosecutors wrote in the letter addressed to Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

“That oath now compels us to speak out against the nomination of Todd Blanche for Attorney General — someone who took the same oath, but has utterly failed to abide by it,” the letter said.

Blanche, a longtime loyalist of President Donald Trump who worked as his personal defense lawyer, has been serving as acting attorney general since the president fired Pam Bondi in April. Blanche, who was Bondi’s deputy at the time of her dismissal, was nominated to make his temporary position permanent June 8.

The former DOJ employees castigated Blanche for “the corruption and abuses that have defined the Justice Department” under his leadership. The letter named Blanche’s role in the DOJ’s botched release of the Epstein files, erasure of accountability for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and “vindictive” prosecutions and investigations of Trump’s perceived political enemies as evidence of his inability to lead the department in an apolitical manner.

Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels called the group of ex-employees

“a who’s who of partisan activists, including liberal politicians such as former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who saw crime drastically rise under her tenure, Trump impeachment witness Pamela Karlan, and multiple former disgruntled Biden administration officials.”

The letter’s signatories included former FBI Special Agent Michael Feinberg, who resigned from the bureau last year after he was allegedly threatened with demotion for being friends with a perceived foe of FBI Director Kash Patel, and several career prosecutors who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Blanche’s degradation of the DOJ’s apolitical career workforce was another point of concern in the letter.

“The culture of fear Blanche has instilled within DOJ’s workforce must end,” the letter said. “Respect for career professionals must return … and instead of exhibiting fealty to the president, the Attorney General must heed John Adams’ admonition that our republic remains a ‘government of laws, not of men.’”

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