Todd Blanche's Epstein case role has sparked conflict of interest concerns. Photo / Getty Images
Five months ago, Todd Blanche was asked at his Senate confirmation hearing about being United States President Donald Trump’s lawyer in his hush money trial and other cases.
Did it mean he would have a “continuing duty of loyalty and confidentiality” to his former client even after becoming deputy attorney-general.
“Yes,” Blanche responded, citing his “attorney-client relationship with President Trump”.
Now that loyalty – and the question of a potential conflict of interest – has become a key component of the questions swirling about Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged with sex trafficking and died in prison in 2019.
The second-ranking Justice Department official is at the centre of a controversial effort to re-examine the Epstein case, the results of which could reopen high-stakes litigation that concluded years ago and play a role in defining aspects of Trump’s legacy.
After weeks of furore about whether the Justice Department would release much of its file on Epstein – and amid speculation about whether the file had information about Trump and others – Blanche travelled to Florida to interview Epstein’s longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
Prosecutors argued at Maxwell’s 2021 trial that she was Epstein’s recruiter and enabler for a decade beginning in 1994, showing an interest in teenagers and luring them to his homes in Palm Beach, Florida; New York; New Mexico; and elsewhere ostensibly for jobs as personal masseuses.
She was also charged with perjury for allegedly lying during a sworn deposition but did not face a trial on those charges after she was convicted of more serious crimes.
Trump said this week that his friendship with Epstein ended years ago after, he said, Epstein hired young female spa workers from his club at Mar-a-Lago.
Maxwell spent nine hours over two days last week answering every question posed by Blanche, according to Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus. The details of the interview have not been released, and Democrats said they feared it was the kind of conflict, they had been concerned about when Blanche was nominated.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (Democrat-New York) said last week in a floor speech that “Trump is sending his personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, to try and execute a corrupt cover-up, potentially offering leniency to a woman who also abused the victims”.
Schumer said this and other actions by Justice officials represent a conflict but he did not provide evidence of an alleged cover-up.
The relationship between Trump and Blanche has been a financially significant one.
Blanche’s law firm was paid US$9.2 million ($15.6m) by Save America, a pro-Trump political action committee, between April 2023 and December 2024, for work on cases that included the trial about payment of alleged hush money to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, according to federal election records.
Trump was found guilty in the hush money case, which has been appealed and is being handled by other lawyers.
Blanche, 50, is an unlikely player in the unfolding drama.
A former federal prosecutor in New York, he handled violent crimes and led the office’s White Plains division in Westchester County.
Blanche was well-liked by colleagues and earned a reputation for diligence, according to lawyers familiar with his work. He then worked at a law firm where his clients included Trump ally Paul Manafort.
Blanche won the dismissal of mortgage fraud charges against Manafort in a New York case in 2019 on the grounds that the indictment too closely mirrored a federal case against him and amounted to double jeopardy.
The case helped bring Blanche to Trump’s attention at a time when he was preparing to run for re-election. Trump later pardoned Manafort in a pair of federal cases that included the federal mortgage fraud charges.
The Justice Department did not respond directly to questions from the Washington Post about whether Blanche consulted a government ethics official regarding an interview with Maxwell.
Instead, the department sent a written statement from spokesman Gates McGavick that said, in full:
“Any suggestion that Todd Blanche has acted unethically while serving as Deputy Attorney General is baseless and defamatory. This gossip column relies on innuendo and the word of an agenda-driven political hack to push a false narrative. This is not a serious article.”
Markus said in a statement that it was appropriate for the Justice Department to send a high-level official such as Blanche to address such an important matter and that Blanche “has conducted himself with complete professionalism throughout this process”.
“It’s truly disheartening how quick people are to assume the worst without any basis in fact,” Markus added.
Some of Blanche’s ex-colleagues are surprised by what they see as his transformation from the independent litigator they knew to one they say seems willing to prioritise his loyalty to Trump.
Mimi Rocah, who previously co-led the White Plains division in the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York with Blanche, said that it is “completely inappropriate and wrong” for him to interview Maxwell – both because of his relationship to Trump and because it is a job that should be reserved for prosecutors on the case, not a Justice official at the highest level.
If a top Washington official had injected himself into a case Blanche handled as a prosecutor, he would have gone “running to Main Justice”, Rocah said, referring to the department’s headquarters in Washington that oversees US Attorneys’ offices and other units.
“That just shows how completely far gone he is as an actual prosecutor,” Rocah said. “He’s really more akin to a political player at this point.”
In a podcast interview last year hosted by Markus, Blanche recounted receiving a phone call from Trump when he was skiing with his family in Colorado on Super Bowl Sunday in February 2023.
At this time before Trump had been indicted, the former President talked with Blanche about representing him in what would become the hush money trial and possibly other cases. A few weeks later, Blanche said, he went to dinner with Trump to discuss his potential hiring.
“And we clicked,” Blanche said. “He’s an enigma, he’s an interesting guy, everybody in this country, most people in the world, frankly, have an opinion about him.
“And some may be right, some may be wrong, but he’s a really interesting man. And not only because of his past as President of the US, but just the life that he’s led.”
Around that time, he left the New York firm and started Blanche Law, enlisting as a partner Emil Bove, a former Southern District colleague who later joined the Justice Department at the start of Trump’s second term and was nominated for a federal appeals judgeship.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and 900 former Justice Department lawyers have questioned Bove’s fitness to serve.
That’s based on his handling of a corruption indictment against New York Mayor Eric Adams, allegations that he instructed underlings to ignore judicial orders, and his role in firing or reassigning career Justice Department employees in perceived politically driven punishments.
In February, Blanche – not yet confirmed by the Senate – was in attendance as Bove stood in court to defend his decision to dismiss the Adams case, arguing that the mayor needed to be unburdened so he could help the Trump Administration carry out its immigration enforcement and public safety agenda.
Blanche was also there when Bove, who was also a defence lawyer for Trump, faced tough questions at his confirmation hearing last month. Bove was confirmed by the Senate 50-49 on Wednesday.
Blanche, who had been a registered Democrat as recently as 2022, switched his registration to Republican in January 2024 and said his voting record residence was Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, a community near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, according to voter records.
He spent much of 2024 as a key legal adviser to Trump – spending long hours in Palm Beach with Trump and attending court appearances and meetings up and down the East Coast.
The lawyer was the face of Trump’s legal team during a six-week trial in New York Supreme Court, where a jury heard evidence that the former President concealed the nature of a US$130,000 payment to Daniels in the final stretch of the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an alleged affair.
Blanche recalled in the podcast interview with Markus how Trump “heard ‘guilty’ 34 times” in the hush money trial and then spoke to the press.
“For somebody who had just gone through what he went through, I was like, I mean, it sounds maybe a little bit obnoxious to say, but I was like, really, really proud of him on that day.”
Throughout the trial, Trump turned the hallway into a campaign stop for news cameras. A stone-faced Blanche stood at his side as the then-candidate launched into meandering tirades about what he called a Democratic conspiracy to use the justice system to keep him from retaking the White House.
Aggressive delay efforts by Blanche and other lawyers helped stall proceedings in a pair of serious federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith over Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and refusing to return them, and for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election.
Both matters were unresolved as the 2024 election neared. The classified records case in Florida was dismissed by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon on grounds that experts widely believed were flawed and reversible. Smith’s team was appealing that decision, but after Trump’s victory, they moved to withdraw those cases before Trump took office.
Blanche and the defence team also secured so many sentencing delays in the hush money case that the proceeding did not take place until 10 days before Trump’s inauguration.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan acknowledged having very limited options. Trump was sentenced to unconditional discharge, which amounted to no punishment.
Trump, known for frequently firing lawyers when they fall out of favour with him, has showered Blanche with praise for his work on the cases.
The closeness between Trump and Blanche continued during the election and culminated in Trump’s announcement that he would nominate his lawyer to serve as deputy attorney-general.
In his hearing, Blanche sounded fully in sync with Trump’s messaging as he said that the President had been a victim of “partisan prosecutors” but that his “faith in this country returned in full force on November 5 when the American people rejected this gross abuse of our justice system”.
There is a long history of former Trump associates who have been ousted by the President over questions of loyalty.
Attorney-General Jeff Sessions recused himself from being involved in the investigation of whether there was Russian interference in the 2016 election, sparking Trump’s ire.
At another point, Trump said it was “disgraceful” that Sessions had asked an inspector general to investigate a campaign-related matter, saying, “Why not use Justice Department lawyers?” Sessions resigned in 2018 at Trump’s request.
So when Trump nominated Blanche to the No 2 job at Justice, Democrats repeatedly asked during the nomination hearing whether he would push back against Trump and show the independence that is required of Justice officials.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said during the hearing that he was “convinced” that Blanche was committed to impartial enforcement. Nonetheless, Blumenthal expressed concern that, “if history is any guide, that the President will ask you to do things that are illegal or immoral. I need to be sure that you’re willing to say no” to Trump.
“Senator, I respectfully very much reject that premise,” Blanche responded. “I don’t think that President Trump is going to ask me to do anything illegal or immoral and so I don’t -”
“But if he does, you would say no?” Blumenthal asked.
“I will follow the law Senator, period - period … And by the way, I’ve spent thousands, certainly hundreds, probably thousands of hours with President Trump over the past couple of years. So I don’t just say that flippantly; I say that with experience and firsthand knowledge.”
Experts say that ethics law can be a grey area subject to interpretation in each unique case.
In the normal course of events, Blanche would have been advised about the standard of conduct for federal employees, which includes this provision: “Whether particular circumstances create an appearance that the law or these standards have been violated shall be determined from the perspective of a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts.”
Several months after Blanche joined the Justice Department, as the controversy over the Epstein files exploded, Blanche said on X that he was going to interview Maxwell.
“Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?” Blanche wrote. At the direction of Attorney-General Pam Bondi, he said, he had contacted Maxwell’s counsel, adding that “No one is above the law - and no lead is off-limits”.
As it happened, the lawyer representing Maxwell was Markus, the same person to whom Blanche had given the podcast interview in June 2024 about his relationship with Trump.
Blanche and Markus came to an agreement, leading to the interviews with Maxwell – and to the questions from Democrats about whether Blanche had a conflict in conducting the private sessions.
Blumenthal, who opposed Blanche’s nomination, said he nonetheless expected the lawyer to follow ethical norms. He said he has been shocked by Blanche’s decision to insert himself into the Maxwell interview, which the senator said was “a breach”.
“I really expected him to be a serious lawyer,” Blumenthal said in an interview with the Washington Post.
“He had a reputation for being with a big firm and representing the client in difficult circumstances. I respect people who represent unpopular causes or individuals, that’s what a lawyer does.”
But Blumenthal said “there’s this stench” about Blanche interviewing Maxwell “that is so powerful it is absolutely mind-boggling, and I frankly would never have expected it of him”.
Norm Eisen, who was the White House special counsel for ethics in the Obama Administration, said in an interview that he would never have authorised that Blanche interview Maxwell because of rules that seek to prevent conflict of interest.
“This is the very definition of the situation where a reasonable person would question the impartiality of Blanche,” Eisen said.
“There is a certain amount of play in these rules, but that is why the public should be concerned … I don’t know any government ethicist who worked for any administration of either party who would have authorised Blanche to participate in this.”
Unless interview transcripts are released, it may be impossible to know whether and how much Blanche pursued questions about Trump’s possible mention in the Epstein files. For his part, Blanche has insisted his loyalty is to the Justice Department.
“This Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead,” Blanche said in a July 22 statement on X.