There was during inadvertent exposure at Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing last week. After Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked Blanche if she and President Donald Trump were friends, the head of the US Department of Justice replied, “I am his lawyer,” before correcting himself and saying “he was her lawyer.”
Blanche before He defended Trump in three criminal cases he was brought in while the president was out of office, but he is emphatically not supposed to be Trump’s lawyer right now. As acting attorney general – Blanche he currently heads the DOJ because the attorney general job is open and Blanche is a Senate-confirmed deputy attorney general (DAG) – Blanche’s client is the United States, not the person who sits in the White House.
But it’s easy to see why he was wrong: Blanche has largely been Trump’s hammer since he was confirmed as the DOJ’s No. 2 official. managing multiple lawsuits of Trump’s enemies. Now Trump wants to promote him to the top DOJ position — a sign of Trump’s faith in his former criminal defense attorney turned private enforcement officer.
It’s unusual for a president to put his own defense attorney in such a powerful position — in fact, it’s unusual for a president to have a criminal defense attorney at all. But Trump has a long line of lawyers who have defended him and his companies against an equally long line of criminal charges to begin with tax fraudfor falsifying business recordsfor illegally taking confidential documentsfor charges arising from his he failed in his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election.
And he has placed at least five criminal defense attorneys in top federal jobs.
Trump’s decision to turn his large team of criminal lawyers into senior government officials is concerning for two main reasons. The first is that two members of the team, Blanche and General Counsel John Sauer, are leaders within the Department of Justice. Next to the military, there is no government institution more formidable than the DOJ, which has the power to arrest and prosecute people for federal crimes.
The DOJ is supposed to use this power with restraint — and often with restrictions imposed by the Constitution itself — but Blanche has used the Justice Department’s power against Trump’s political enemies who. appear to be no crime and removing sanctions on Trump and his Justice Department, all while Sauer has worked consistently to persuade the Supreme Court to remove other restrictions on Trump.
Meanwhile, three of Trump’s former criminal lawyers, Emil Bove, Justin Smithand Matthew Schwartzthey now have lifetime appointments as judges of the United States Court of Appeals, placing them one rung up the judicial ladder from the Supreme Court. The judiciary, of course, is the branch of government that is supposed to stop the president from breaking the law, so every Trump loyalist appointed to this branch weakens the remaining legal restrictions on Trump and his administration.
Trump, of course, is not the only president to put people close to the Justice Department or the federal bench. The famous President John F. Kennedy he named his brother the attorney general. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Abe Fortas, who he represented him in the 1948 election disputeto the Supreme Court in 1965.
But Trump’s decision to put someone willing to pursue his own personal interests in charge of the Justice Department is, at the very least, breaking with post-Watergate regulations strong to prevent the DOJ from becoming a political weapon. And Fortas, who he resigned in shame after less than four years on the bench, it is more of a cautionary tale than an example of good governance.
Although the current Supreme Court is dominated by conservative Republicanssome of these justices side with Trump on questions that divide the Republican Party — such as whether Trump is fit on the one hand to impose high taxes on many nations. But if Trump turns his personal aides into righteous, that could change quickly. A court controlled by MAGA supporters means that all remaining checks on Trump’s authority could end. Many of his former attorneys-turned-elect are already working to make an out-of-control Trump administration a reality.
Are Trump’s former lawyers already reshaping the US legal code?
Smith, who worked on Trump v. United States protective caseit was it was confirmed last month. And Schwartz, who worked on the case of forged documents that led to Trump’s conviction, he joined the bench last week. So there isn’t much to say about these two men’s records in federal office – yet.
But Blanche, Bove, and Sauer have all shown ruthless cunning in their efforts to promote Trump and his causes.
Blanche has been DAG since March 2025, a role that oversees federal criminal prosecutions and its 93 US regional attorneys’ offices. He has led the entire Justice Department since April, after former Attorney General Pam Bondi – another of Trump’s former lawyers – left office.
So Blanche oversaw several dubious federal charges targeting people whom Trump sees as enemiesincluding the criminal cases targeting former FBI Director James Comey and current New York Attorney General Letitia James. There is also evidence that Blanche has played an unusually direct role in the Justice Department’s decision to bring frivolous indictments against prominent Democrats.
In May 2025, for example, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat, arrived at an ICE detention center in his New Jersey city and asked to visit it. He was briefly allowed to enter the gate, where he was confronted by about ten police officers who asked him to leave, which he did.
But then one of these officers received a call. The video, which was later submitted to federal court, shows the officer turning to his colleagues after the call and announcing, “We’re arresting the mayor right now, according to the deputy attorney general of the United States.” That deputy attorney general was, of course, Blanche. (In a September court filing, the DOJ confirmed that officers arrested Baraka”after consulting with the Deputy Attorney General.”)
However, with Blanche’s clear decision to personally order Baraka’s arrest, the DAG forgot to check whether Baraka actually did something that could support criminal charges. The mayor was charged with trespassing, and the charges were dropped two weeks later. At the hearing that formally dismissed the charges, a federal judge admonished prosecutors for “abusing the government’s power pursuing weak cases or giving examples without sufficient reasons.”
Blanche also unsuccessfully tried to establish a $1.776 billion Trump “anti-weapons fund,” which would have been used to funnel money to Trump associates — including, potentially, Trump supporters who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Although the fund appears to be dying after receiving a bipartisan push in Congress, a DOJ press release announcing the fund it said it had been “established” by the attorney general, a role held by Blanche, and that the fund would be managed by five people chosen by Blanche.
Before Trump took office, Bove was Blanche’s law partner. Shortly before Bove joined the bench, he briefly served as deputy assistant attorney general — essentially the deputy head of the DAG, which meant Bove was Blanche’s right-hand man. In that role, he was often described as Trump”executor.”
Bove only spent about half a year as Blanche’s lieutenant, but he managed start a small rebellion in one of the prestigious offices of the Department of Justice during the short period of his leadership. After Bove ordered the DOJ to clear corruption charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams “without prejudice,” a maneuver that would have allowed the charges to be reinstated. if Adams did not cooperate for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, seven federal prosecutors resigned rather than comply with Bove’s order.
One of them was Danielle Sassoon, a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon. Another, Hagan Scotten, wrote in his resignation letter to Bove that “I hope you will eventually find someone who is foolish enough, or cowardly enough, to make your point. But it would never be me.” Scotten clerked for Republican Chief Justice John Roberts and future Republican Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Meanwhile, a whistleblower complaint from another former DOJ attorney alleges that Bove said, in a meeting about the court’s decision to halt deportations, “that the DOJ could. the need to think about telling the court ‘damn you’ and ignore any such order.”
Trump nominated Bove to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit last September. Federal appeals courts typically spend months deciding cases, so his time on the Third Circuit has so far been less eventful than his time at the DOJ. But there are early signs that he remains loyal to Trump even after he moves into the independent branch of government. Up attended a Trump rally in December, a very unusual move for judges who are supposed to remain neutral. And the background image on his iPhone is reported to be a picture of a defiant Trump raising his fistor at least it was several months after he joined the bench.
That leaves Sauer, who, as attorney general, is responsible for defending the federal government’s programs in the Supreme Court. That includes Trump’s tariffs that the Supreme Court threw out last winter, and Trump’s unconstitutional attempt stripping many natural born Americans of their citizenship.
Despite these losses, Sauer has an impressive record before the Supreme Court, because the Court is controlled by six Republicans who strongly support Trump and his agenda. This is, after all, the same Court that said that Trump can use the power of the presidency to commit crimes, after Sauer argued so much.
Sauer has been more effective in lobbying Republican justices to block lower court rulings against Trump on the Court.shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other less frequently used issues that have become a regular part of Supreme Court proceedings during Trump’s first term.
So Trump has taken several of his personal lawyers and turned them into some of the most well-respected — and in some cases, the most powerful — people in the legal profession. So far, the evidence suggests that these people remain loyal to Trump, even as they move to supposedly non-partisan jobs. Three of them already have a lifetime appointment.
Any nation governed by the rule of law must have government officials who will obey any restrictions imposed by the law – whether they are the heads of federal agencies who follow the law out of duty, or judges who hold the top branch officials who refuse to do so. Institutions such as the Department of Justice also rely on informal regulations, many of which are reactive a similar abuse of power during the Nixon administrationthat have long dogged federal prosecutors.
But Trump’s DOJ is often hostile to these regulations, and the growing legal power of Trump’s personal lawyers is the latest example. Their robust judicial reform clears the way for an unfettered federal government.
