Prosecutions, Epstein and the $1.8B fund: What to watch at Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Todd Blanche is heading into a high-stakes test this week in his bid to become attorney general, with key Republicans still undecided about whether to back his nomination.

Blanche will need the support of all GOP lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee in order to advance his nomination to lead the Justice Department, which he has done in an acting capacity since April.

Blanche is expected to face scrutiny over issues including the department’s investigations into President Donald Trump’s foes, a contentious deal to settle Trump’s IRS lawsuit and its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files when he appears before the committee for his confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

Here’s a look at key topics likely to dominate the hearing:

‘I love you, sir:’ Blanche & Trump’s close relationship from the courtroom to DOJ

Blanche came into the public spotlight as the lead attorney defending Trump in his hush money trial in New York. The close relationship they forged then — and the unwavering loyalty Blanche has shown to Trump since joining the Justice Department last year — is likely to command the spotlight at the hearing.

Trump has made clear his desire to use the Justice Department to pursue his political opponents. And Blanche has accelerated investigations into perceived foes of the president since Pam Bondi was fired after failing to deliver criminal cases against Trump’s political enemies.

Democrats say Blanche is acting as if he were still Trump’s personal attorney.

Blanche has strongly rejected accusations that the administration has weaponized the department for political purposes, saying in an ABC interview in February that “there’s not a whiff of political partisanship in what we’re doing.”

The Justice Department has historically prided itself on independence from the White House when it comes to prosecutorial decisions. But Blanche has insisted he sees no problem with the president’s interest in Justice Department matters and says he has felt no pressure to placate Trump.

“We have thousands of ongoing investigations and prosecutions going on in this country right now,” Blanche said at a press conference in May. “And it is true that some of them involve men, women and entities that the president in the past has had issues with and believes should be investigated. That is his right, and indeed it is his duty to do that.”

When asked at the time about his potential nomination for attorney general, Blanche said that if Trump chose someone else for the job he would say: “Thank you very much. I love you, sir.”

Blanche has tried to walk a fine line when discussing Jan. 6

Blanche’s past comments surrounding the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could face renewed scrutiny.

Blanche has said he was not consulted on Trump’s sweeping clemency grant for some 1,500 people charged in the riot, including people convicted of attacking police. Pressed on the matter during his confirmation hearing for deputy attorney general last year, Blanche said that people who commit violence against law enforcement “should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Asked whether he would advise the president in the future against pardoning violent offenders, Blanche told lawmakers last year that “violence against law enforcement is never something that should be tolerated.”

But in front of a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in May, Blanche touted the Jan. 6 pardons as an accomplishment for the administration, saying to cheers in the audience that “by 5 p.m. on Jan. 20, every one of them was either pardoned or had their sentence commuted.”

“So when folks say we’ve done nothing, I say ‘you have a very short memory,’” Blanche told the crowd.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose vote is likely to be crucial for Blanche’s nomination, has said he will not support anyone for attorney general who equivocates on the events of Jan 6. Tillis, however, recently said he doesn’t have any concerns about Blanche’s record regarding Jan. 6.

With the death of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, there are 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats on the panel. If even one Republican on the committee votes against Blanche, it could scuttle his nomination.

‘We are not moving forward with the fund, period.’ Will that assurance be enough?

Arguably the rockiest stretch of Blanche’s tenure atop the Justice Department has been a $1.776 billion fund meant to compensate allies of the president who feel mistreated by the criminal justice system.

Blanche was the public face of the initiative, which emerged from a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The fund faced instant bipartisan congressional backlash, exemplified by a tense closed-door meeting at which shouting Republicans confronted Blanche over the planned payouts.

Weeks later, he revealed on behalf of the administration that the idea had been scrapped, saying at a hearing, “We are not moving forward with the fund, period.”

Nonetheless, expect Democrats to press Blanche on whether he has truly foreclosed the possibility of reviving the fund, especially since Trump remains vocal about his desire for compensation for his supporters and since the Justice Department has balked at a judge’s insistence that it assert in writing that it won’t bring back the compensation.

Tillis has been sharply critical of not only the fund but a separate aspect of the IRS that guarantees Trump and members of his family immunity from audits. Blanche has repeatedly said that the IRS protection remains intact, something that Tillis and others are expected to demand answers about. A federal judge on Monday stopped short of voiding the audit immunity deal but called into question its legal legitimacy.

Questions over the Epstein files have never gone away

Blanche was deputy attorney general when the Justice Department in the summer of 2025 found itself besieged by crisis over its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. A year later, questions remain, despite the department’s release last January of what it said were more than 3 million pages of records from its sex-trafficking investigation of the late financier.

Blanche will unquestionably be grilled about the case, especially after Bondi told lawmakers behind closed-doors after her ouster as attorney general that Blanche was the department’s point person on the release of the Epstein documents.

Trouble began in February 2025 when Bondi presented far-right influencers at the White House with white binders that she said contained the Epstein files but in reality actually consisted of largely public materials.

Things worsened last July when the department said in an unsigned statement that it would not release any additional records from the investigation, only to be forced into a reversal by an onslaught of criticism across the political spectrum and legislation from Congress that mandated the records’ disclosure.

But the staggered release was beset by problems, including redaction errors that left exposed nude photos showing the faces of potential victims. Some names, email addresses and other identifying information was either unredacted or not fully obscured.

Blanche has faced additional scrutiny over his unusual trip to a Florida prison to interview Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, as she serves a 20-year sentence for luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. After the interview, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.