Weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump ousted former Attorney General Pam Bondi for what multiple reports indicate was her refusal to aggressively target his political opponents, Trump’s hand-picked interim replacement, his ex-personal lawyer Todd Blanche, has moved rapidly to advance the commander-in-chief’s political agenda through the nation’s top law enforcement agency. The development has sparked fierce debate over the future of the Department of Justice’s long-standing tradition of impartiality and independence from presidential influence.
Blanche, a former federal prosecutor who previously served as the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general and was a core member of Trump’s legal defense team during his multiple pre-2025 inauguration criminal cases, has already made sweeping moves targeting figures and organizations labeled as enemies by Trump. His actions have prompted critics to warn that the department is being transformed from an impartial arbiter of justice into a political weapon for the sitting president.
According to reporting, Bondi was removed from her post last month largely over her failure to pursue high-profile criminal cases against two of Trump’s most prominent critics: former FBI Director James Comey, who has been an outspoken opponent of Trump since his first term, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who secured a $454 million civil judgment against Trump in a 2023 real estate fraud case. Within weeks of taking the top role at the Justice Department, Blanche secured a new criminal indictment against Comey, centered on a seemingly innocuous Instagram post featuring seashells arranged to spell out the numbers “8647”. Prosecutors argue “86” is coded slang for assassination, and “47” references Trump’s status as the 47th U.S. president.
Legal experts across the political spectrum have widely condemned the indictment as a blatant abuse of prosecutorial power. Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor, called the case against Comey a “joke” in a recent Substack analysis, while noting that the underlying abuse of power represented by the prosecution is no laughing matter. “This is not about prosecuting a legitimate criminal case,” Eliason wrote. “It’s about using the justice system to punish one of Trump’s perceived enemies. Even if it does not result in a conviction, such a prosecution results in tremendous emotional and financial harm. And that’s precisely the point.”
Beyond targeting individual Trump critics, Blanche has also opened a major criminal case against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a prominent civil rights organization that has long monitored and opposed far-right extremist groups across the United States. The SPLC faces charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering conspiracy related to its long-standing practice of using donor funds to pay confidential informants embedded within hate groups including the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America.
In his first public press conference after taking office, Blanche defended his actions and pushed back against accusations that he is weaponizing the Justice Department for political purposes. He argued that investigating figures the president views as threats is not just within the president’s right, but a core duty of his administration. “It is true that some of them involve men, women and entities that the president, in the past, has had issues with and believes should be investigated,” Blanche said. “That is his right, and indeed, it is his duty to do that.”
Blanche also reversed the accusation of weaponization, claiming that the Department of Justice had already been turned into a political tool by the prior Biden administration in unprecedented fashion. Blanche’s history as a core member of Trump’s legal team is well-documented: he represented Trump during his 2024 New York hush money trial and the two federal criminal cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, one over alleged improper handling of classified documents and another over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Both federal cases were dropped immediately after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and current law professor at the University of Michigan, told reporters that even prior to Blanche’s appointment, the Justice Department was already operating more like Trump’s personal law firm than an impartial government agency. But she added that the situation has deteriorated sharply under Blanche’s leadership. McQuade argued that Blanche’s aggressive moves to target Trump’s opponents give every indication that he is actively auditioning for a permanent appointment as attorney general by currying favor with the president.
Blanche is permitted to serve in an acting capacity for 210 days under federal law, after which he will require confirmation by the U.S. Senate to keep the post permanently. The push to target political opponents is just one part of a broader post-inauguration purge by Trump, who has already removed hundreds of government officials he deems insufficiently loyal, targeted private law firms that participated in prior cases against him, and pulled federal funding from universities that have drawn his ire.
Former Democratic President Barack Obama recently spoke out against the sweeping changes to U.S. governing norms, during an appearance on *The Late Show with Stephen Colbert*. While he did not mention Trump by name, Obama made clear his opposition to the idea that the White House should direct law enforcement to target political opponents. “The White House shouldn’t be able to direct the attorney general to go around prosecuting whoever the president wants to prosecute,” Obama said. “The norm is, the idea is, that the attorney general is the people’s lawyer. It’s not the president’s consigliere.”