Petition: Media Must Cover Blanche as Unfit to Be AG

More than 1,200 former Department of Justice employees have signed a letter urging the Senate to reject Todd Blanche's nomination as attorney general, saying he has "utterly failed" his constitutional oath. Two of his former colleagues in the Southern District of New York — prosecutors who once considered him a close friend — published a scathing condemnation this week, writing that Blanche has turned his back on the core principle that the DOJ serves the American people, not the president. The list of their grievances is not abstract: Blanche fired career prosecutors and FBI agents to satisfy Trump's political vendettas, argued openly that Trump has a "right" to shape federal investigations, engineered a $1.8 billion taxpayer slush fund that a federal judge just declared illegitimate, and has been referred to his state bar for possible disciplinary proceedings as a result.

This is not a man who rose through the ranks of independent public service. Blanche was Trump's personal defense attorney — he represented him in the hush money trial, the classified documents case, the January 6 federal case, and the Georgia RICO case — and was rewarded with control of the Justice Department. Trump has since used that arrangement explicitly, praising Blanche publicly for his loyalty and demanding the Senate confirm him.

We call on the media to cover Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing not as a routine Senate proceeding, but as what over a thousand of his own former colleagues say it is: a test of whether the United States will permanently install a president's personal fixer at the head of the nation's top law enforcement agency. The public deserves reporting that treats that question with the gravity it demands.