Trump Picks Todd Blanche, His Defense Lawyer, to Be Deputy Attorney General

Trump Picks Todd Blanche, His Defense Lawyer, to Be Deputy Attorney General

Mr. Blanche, a former supervising federal prosecutor in Manhattan, oversaw the president-elect’s legal defense against multiple indictments.

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By Devlin Barrett

Reporting from Washington

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that he would name Todd Blanche, a lawyer who oversaw his defense against multiple indictments, to become the No. 2 official at the Justice Department.

The selection of Mr. Blanche, a former prosecutor in Manhattan, as the deputy attorney general serves as an extraordinary rebuke to the criminal cases against Mr. Trump. A day earlier, the president-elect chose Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and a caustic critic of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, to become attorney general.

If confirmed as deputy attorney general, Mr. Blanche would be responsible for supervising the day-to-day operations of a department that Mr. Trump has repeatedly assailed.

Others on Mr. Trump’s legal team are also in line to receive top assignments: Emil Bove as principal associate deputy attorney general, and D. John Sauer, who represented Mr. Trump before the Supreme Court in arguing that the former president was entitled to broad immunity, as solicitor general.

In announcing his selection of Mr. Blanche, Mr. Trump pointed to his years as a supervising federal prosecutor at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and his past clerkships.

“Todd is an excellent attorney who will be a crucial leader in the Justice Department, fixing what has been a broken System of Justice for far too long,” he wrote.

The choice underscores Mr. Blanche’s swift transformation and the big gamble he made in taking on Mr. Trump as a client: More than a year ago, he was a registered Democrat in New York and a partner at a prestigious law firm on Wall Street.

Mr. Blanche defended Mr. Trump in three of the criminal cases against him, including in Florida, over his handling of classified documents in Florida; in Washington, regarding his efforts to subvert the 2020 election; and in Manhattan, for a hush money payment to a porn actress.

The case in New York ended in Mr. Trump’s conviction on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal, making him the first former president to be branded a felon.

As Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer at that trial, Mr. Blanche forged a unique connection to the president-elect. For weeks inside a criminal courthouse, Mr. Trump and Mr. Blanche sat inches apart, often whispering to each other during long days of legal arguments and testimony.

In defending Mr. Trump, Mr. Blanche assembled a legal team that had to fight simultaneously on multiple fronts, all in the thick of a heated presidential campaign.

The defense strategy for all of the indictments against Mr. Trump could be boiled down to one word: delay. And in most of the cases it worked, if not exactly how he and his team initially envisioned.

In July, the federal judge overseeing the documents case, Judge Aileen M. Cannon, dismissed all of the charges, ruling that the special counsel, Jack Smith, had been improperly appointed.

The election case sputtered after the Supreme Court ruled in July that presidents were entitled to substantial immunity from prosecution. Now that Mr. Trump is returning to the White House, Mr. Smith plans to wind down his two federal cases before Mr. Trump takes office in January, people familiar with his plans have said.

Along the way, Mr. Blanche often faced blistering criticism from judges who disliked Mr. Trump’s legal arguments, or the candidate’s bombast outside the courtroom.

Mr. Blanche first joined the Southern District as a paralegal in 1999, attending Brooklyn Law School at night. He returned a few years later, this time as a prosecutor, where he largely handled violent crimes cases in Manhattan and eventually ascended to supervise that work. After leaving the prosecutor’s office, he became a defense lawyer in private practice.

Mr. Blanche has represented other members of Mr. Trump’s circle, including Paul Manafort, his onetime campaign chairman, and Boris Epshteyn, an adviser.

Mr. Bove and Mr. Blanche have had a long partnership: They overlapped at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, and when Mr. Blanche started his own firm and began to represent Mr. Trump, Mr. Bove eventually followed suit.

Mr. Sauer, who once clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, has handled appellate matters for Mr. Trump, including his challenge to a gag order imposed on him in the election case in Washington.

As solicitor general of Missouri, Mr. Sauer urged the Supreme Court to intervene on behalf of his state and several others in support of a bid by Texas to keep Mr. Trump in power by challenging the 2020 election results in several crucial swing states.

Trump Builds His Administration

As his team ramps up the transition process, President-elect Donald Trump says his administration will radically reshape the federal government.

• Immigration: Trump’s plans to expel noncitizens on a mass scale are likely to raise prices on goods and services and lower employment rates for U.S. workers, many economists say.
• Middle East: Trump’s emerging team in the Middle East appears poised to push U.S. foreign policy into even tighter accord with Israel’s far-right government.
• Skirting the Senate: Trump’s demand that Senate Republicans surrender their role in vetting his nominees poses an early test of whether his second term will be more radical than his first.
• Department of Education: The president-elect said he would use the department to further his priorities. He also said he would close it. Both options would face difficulties.
• Slashing Government: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been tapped to lead what Trump called the Department of Government Efficiency, which he said would seek “drastic change.”