President Trump nominates Todd Branch as attorney general
President Donald Trump announced during remarks at a private dinner on June 3 that he plans to nominate Todd Branch for attorney general.
The July 15 Senate confirmation hearing for attorney general nominee Todd Blanche could become heated as Democrats plan to grill President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer over his prosecution of Trump’s opponents, withholding millions of pages of Epstein files and forgiving Trump’s unpaid taxes.
Since becoming acting attorney general in early April, Blanche has overseen the Justice Department’s new prosecution of President Trump target James Comey and defended the department’s efforts to create an “anti-weaponization fund” that could pay out money to Trump supporters convicted of the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. After facing bipartisan backlash against the fund, Blanche said he would not move forward with it.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have already voiced opposition to Blanche’s nomination.
The committee’s top Democrat, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), accused Branch during a June 24 committee hearing of abusing the Justice Department’s “terrible prosecutorial powers” and “targeting those who seek to defy the president.”
“Blanche has treated the Department of Justice like a criminal defense firm whose only client is President Trump,” Durbin said.
Still, to block the nomination, Democrats would need support from some Republicans, which could be a difficult task.
When President Trump nominated Blanche in June, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) immediately endorsed him, saying in a statement that Blanche is “well qualified and dedicated to restoring law and order across our nation.”
Who is Todd Blanche?
Before Trump returned to the Oval Office, Branch served as Trump’s personal attorney on several cases. She sat next to the then-former president at the Manhattan criminal trial where Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
President Trump originally nominated Branch to be deputy attorney general, the number two position in the Justice Department, in November 2024. Blanche became acting attorney general after President Trump fired Pam Bondi, the first permanent attorney general of the president’s second term, in April.
Why did Mr. Trump nominate Mr. Branch?
In public, Mr. Trump has been vague about his reasons for firing Mr. Bondi, a potential indicator of his expectations for Mr. Blanche. President Trump posted on social media that Bondi was “moving on to an important new job that is much needed in the private sector.”
But President Trump was reportedly unhappy with Bondi’s lack of success in prosecuting his political opponents and critics, and with the Justice Department’s handling of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a former Trump friend.
In March 2025, Mr. Bondi fueled expectations that the Justice Department would release incriminating information against associates of Mr. Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
But two months later, Bondi reportedly told Trump that his name appeared multiple times in the file. The Justice Department then released a memo in July saying that a systematic internal review of the files had not uncovered a list of criminal Epstein clients and that “further disclosure is not appropriate or warranted.”
In the months that followed, Bondi faced intense criticism that the Justice Department was failing Epstein’s victims and the public by failing to bring more transparency and justice to the case.
Amid these criticisms, Mr. Branch has largely become the public face of the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein file. He interviewed Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking of minors against Epstein.
After Congress passed a bipartisan bill requiring the Justice Department to release Epstein documents with limited exceptions, Mr. Branch presided over a Justice Department press conference in January that released millions of pages of Epstein documents, many with redactions and millions more withheld.
What did Blanche do as acting attorney general?
Under Bondi, charges against two people that President Trump had publicly sought to indict, former FBI Director James Comey and New York State Attorney General Letitia James, were dismissed. The indictment against Comey says he lied to Congress, and the indictment against James says he committed bank fraud.
Since Mr. Blanche became acting attorney general, Mr. Blanche’s Justice Department has filed a new indictment against Mr. Comey, charging him with threatening to harm or kill the president in May 2025 after he posted an image of a seashell shaped like an “86 47” on Instagram.
According to Merriam-Webster, “86” is a slang term meaning “throw away” or “remove,” and Trump is the 47th president of the United States. Some Trump supporters interpreted the post as a threat. Comey quickly deleted the post and said in a new post that he “didn’t realize that some people would associate these numbers with violence” and that he deleted the post because he opposed “violence of any kind.”
Mr. Blanche’s Justice Department also secured an indictment accusing the Southern Poverty Law Center of defrauding donors by using funds to pay informants within white supremacist groups. The center has denied deceiving anyone but has labeled some conservative groups hateful or extremist, angering many Republicans.
Mr. Blanche’s Justice Department also reached a settlement with Mr. Trump, his two eldest sons, and the Trump Organization, which was condemned by a federal judge on July 13 as an improper attempt to justify “immunity to people and entities associated with the president.” The deal was for Trump’s family and the Trump Organization to drop the lawsuit in exchange for relief from past tax obligations and the creation of an “anti-weaponization” fund.
The Justice Department said the agreement resolves a lawsuit brought by the Trump family after a federal contractor leaked tax return information from the Trump family and hundreds of thousands of other taxpayers. But the judge said it was not a legitimate legal dispute because Trump controlled both sides of the case, his side and the government’s.
Thousands of lawyers have left the Justice Department since Trump returned to office, including hundreds in leadership positions. Many former officials say the deportation harmed the Justice Department’s law enforcement efforts.
Despite his resignation, Blanche has overseen a concerted effort to strengthen the Justice Department’s crackdown on corruption. In May, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against 15 Minnesota defendants in an alleged scheme to defraud taxpayers of more than $90 million, including cases involving Medicaid and autism-related benefits.
