Was Todd Blanche Paid in Part through His Appointment to DOJ?

The Acting Attorney General Has Continued to Act Like Donald Trump’s Personal Attorney and Should Not Be Confirmed

The Senate should not confirm Todd Blanche to be Attorney General.

He has abused his temporary position as Acting Attorney General by continuing to behave like Donald Trump’s personal attorney rather than the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Any Senator with even a shred of integrity would reject him, yet reporting this week suggests that Blanche is on a “glide path” to confirmation despite all of the damage he has already done as both Acting AG and Deputy AG.

I have reviewed Blanche’s paperwork, and I think the disclosures raise a legitimate question: Was he compensated, at least in part, through his appointment to DOJ by Donald Trump?

In his responses to the Senate’s Questions for the Record (QFR) on his nomination to be Deputy Attorney General in 2025, Blanche stated: “I estimate that I worked on average 70 hours per week on matters for President Trump from the time I started my representation until early January, 2025.”

So from April 2023 until just before Trump’s inauguration, Blanche devoted almost 6,600 hours to him, almost every working hour and nearly every waking hour. That’s a level of devotion to a job that most Americans never experience. A typical full-time employee works about 2,080 hours per year.

Since the January 2025 inauguration, Blanche has spent another 77 weeks serving Trump, at our expense.

But how much did Trump, who is notorious for not paying his bills in full or in part, actually pay him? We don’t know.

Here’s what Blanche told the Senate under oath last year: “While I never had an exact standard billing rate, President Trump paid me an hourly rate that was appropriate for the work that I was performing.”

That’s a dodge and sounds pretty dodgy, too.

In March 2023, Blanche left a Big Law firm then known as Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft–where he had been an equity partner since September 2017–“primarily to represent Trump.” The estimated billing rate for a Big Law partner in 2023 was between $1,000 and $2,000 an hour. 6,600 hours at the rate of $2,000/hr would put Blanche’s fees north of $13 million. Even if he were billing Trump at the low end of that range, a discounted $1,000/hr, his fees would have totaled more than $6.6 million, assuming they were paid.

Did Trump actually pay anything close to that in fees for Blanche’s time? The available evidence suggests otherwise.

Well, for starters, we know Blanche bought a $1.6 million home in Palm Beach to be closer to Trump, and he took out a 30-year mortgage at an 8% rate to buy it. That sure doesn’t sound like someone rolling in the dough from his wealthy client or he could have paid cash, especially after his six years at Cadwalader.

His financial disclosure reported only $96,972 in salary from Blanche Law PLLC (a first-year associate at Cadwalader makes $235K per year). To be fair, he estimated a 2024 partnership draw from Blanche Law of about $2.2 million, but that was his own estimate. In his QFRs, he says his law firm was paid over $10 million by the Save America PAC, but those payments included expenses and the consultants his firm retained to defend Trump; they were not simply legal fees flowing to Blanche himself. Meanwhile, he valued the firm at between $1 million and $5 million.

If his estimate of a $2.2 million partnership draw were true, that would suggest that Blanche was billing Trump at the equivalent of roughly $600 an hour–well below what Cadwalader billed out for a senior counsel with far less experience.

Is that a huge discount or what?

In my opinion, part of Blanche’s compensation was a powerful appointment at the top of the Justice Department, where he could continue advancing Trump’s personal interests.

For example, he could collude with Trump in putting his signature on a completely outrageous and unprecedented “settlement” of Trump’s outlandish $10 billion demand over an IRS contractor’s data breach during his first term. As U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams noted in her findings this week: Trump and DOJ perpetuated fraud on the court. Blanche filed no motions to defend the U.S. from Trump’s suit, despite DOJ having done so in other comparable suits over that data breach. She also referred Blanche to the New York Bar for his actions.

What would Todd Blanche do (#WWTBD) for his former (and current) client? Almost anything, it seems. Here’s a key part of how Blanche used DOJ to try to immunize Trump in the collusive settlement of his IRS lawsuit:

The United States RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES … and is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action, appeals. or requests for any relief, including injunctive relief, monetary relief, damages, examinations or similar or related reviews, appeals, debt relief, costs, attorney’s fees, expenses, and/or interest, whether presently known or unknown, that …have been or could have been asserted by Defendants [the U.S.] against any of the Plaintiffs [Trump] or related or affiliated individuals (including, without limitation, family or others filing jointly), or parties including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries … in connection with … any matters currently pending or that could be pending … before Defendants or other agencies or departments.

What Blanche sought to give Trump is federal immunity–FOREVER–for his “unofficial acts,” meaning his private conduct. It is the perfect and despicable companion to Chief Justice John Roberts and his fellow Republican appointees giving Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for his so-called “official acts.”

So, Blanche got rewarded for his service to Trump with a powerful role—at the very least like a bonus—and then used that office to reward Trump in return.

I don’t think you need an express quid pro quo to condemn this disgusting symbiosis.

The whole episode is utterly disqualifying in and of itself. It is so blatantly wrong. And, it is only part of the story.

In his QFR to the Senate last year, Blanche wrote that he “also served as counsel to President Trump in an advising capacity in various other civil investigations and cases between April 2023” and the 2025 inauguration. Ethics rules prevent him from revealing those cases or potential cases–or how much he was paid–without his client’s consent. Trump could make it public, with the snap of his fingers.

Don’t the American people deserve to know? Afterall, it was just days after Trump’s inauguration that he sued the IRS. Are we really expected to believe that potential lawsuit never came up in all those 6,000+ hours of legal advice? Come on.

Of course, under John Roberts’ pernicious immunity opinion, Trump is unbound on who he can pardon–although I fully dispute that and going to work to undo. With Blanche’s help and support for J-6ers, Trump has already pardoned his violent emissaries convicted of assaulting police officers to try to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. Just this month, Blanche oversaw the dismissal of charges of seditious conspiracy against Proud Boys members, in addition to orchestrating the effort to use DOJ’s settlement fund as a $1.776 billion vehicle to enrich Trump’s thugs. Congress has yet to stop those efforts.

Notably, Trump recently “joked” that he would pardon anyone who came within 200 feet of the Oval Office. Blanche now sits squarely inside that inner circle.

Blanche surely knows that Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, John Mitchell, was convicted of perjury and other crimes before being disbarred. Though it is revolting, it is also unsurprising that–with Blanche at the helm–DOJ is trying to block state bars from disbarring or punishing DOJ attorneys who break the rules. I wonder why?

Blanche must not be confirmed.

Any Senator who votes for him should be held accountable this fall and beyond, and that includes Susan Collins (R-ME), Jon Husted (R-OH), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Thom Tillis (R-NC), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA). Those who Trump sought to punish for being insufficiently loyal to him should make like John McCain and give Blanche a thumbs down, if they have a shred of integrity left.

---

What I’m Reading:

• The lawsuit from Blanche’s former clients claiming he overbilled them (Trump expressed no such concerns):

  • They also claim he forged documents, which he denies, right before he parachuted out of Cadwalader to “primarily defend” Trump.

• The letter from the Justice Connection that I signed along with more than 1,000 other former DOJ officials and attorneys opposing Blanche’s confirmation.

  • Our letter notes that “Regardless of how we joined the department, every one of us took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the occupant of the White House. That oath now compels us to speak out against the nomination of Todd Blanche for Attorney General–someone who took the same oath, but has utterly failed to abide by it.“

• The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate by James Rosen.

  • Before Trump became the first felon and adjudicated sexual abuser ever elected president, Nixon’s Attorney General was the highest ranking executive branch official ever convicted of criminal charges–and disbarred.