WASHINGTON — Then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was in the middle of recording a podcast episode with a conservative legal group when President Trump announced he had been elevated to the highest law enforcement post in the country.
Blanche spoke with America First Legal for the debut episode of its podcast “The Arena” on Thursday and was unable to check his phone to even see he had been named as Attorney General Pam Bondi’s replacement.
“When we began recording this podcast with our friend Todd Blanche, he was the deputy attorney general,” said AFL President Gene Hamilton.
“By the time the filming concluded, it had been reported that he was now serving as acting attorney general. It’s the way this town works; it’s the way DC is.”
Trump posted on Truth Social a little after 1 p.m.: “We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General.”
At one point in the show, the deputy AG mentioned his mindset in his position, “We all want to make President Trump look good. … If you do a good job, and you work with me, you make me look good.”
He added: “I hope to make the Attorney General look good, and that’s what hopefully works.”
Asked about criticism he and Bondi have received in their roles, Blanche also replied: “I like that people say we don’t do enough. I like it that the president says to me, to the attorney general, you need to be doing more. … The Justice Department can always be doing more.”
AFL’s show will feature analysis, commentary — including scathing criticism of bad legal takes online — and exclusive interviews with special guests inside and outside of the Trump administration.
Blanche, who served as Trump’s criminal defense attorney in the Manhattan “hush money” case brought by District Attorney Alvin Bragg, shared new details about his upbringing, family life and legal career during the interview.
“The reason why I’m here, as I say a lot, is I got a phone call from a guy who was being railroaded by some rogue prosecutors, and he decided to run for president and won,” he quipped.
A former federal prosecutor, Blanche worked his way up the ranks in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, first as a paralegal, then as an assistant US attorney and eventually as co-chief of the office’s violent crimes division, prosecuting gangs, drug dealers and murderers.
He did that while also juggling the responsibilities of being a father to two young kids — and attending law school in the evenings before heading into his paralegal position.
“If I didn’t go to night law school, I wouldn’t have been the lawyer that I was,” he said. “That allowed me to be a prosecutor; that allowed me to have skills to represent the president.”
“My family, my wife, we had kids when we were young, and that was a challenge at the time, but that also made me who I am today,” he added.
Blanche exited the district attorney’s office for private practice and eventually became a defense attorney for 2016 Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, and later, the 45th president himself — an experience that he said showed him what “politicized” prosecutions look like.
“It turned something in my soul to make me realize that … there were people with power that were pure abusers,” he said.
“Fast forward a couple of years to representing President Trump and, and you’re right, those folks were bullies,” Blanche said of Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“The best way to beat a bully is by, you know, punch him in the nose — or winning an election, both work.”
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