National Review Is Wrong About Todd Blanche As Attorney General

Conservatives spent the better part of a decade learning a hard lesson about the United States Department of Justice: that bad actors could take the storied institution and abuse its powers. We watched it happen in real time. So it is strange, now that a man with a serious plan to fix the place sits before the Senate, to see National Review’s editors counsel “No to Todd Blanche for Attorney General.”

Looking back, there was no editorial called “No to Merrick Garland.” The editors’ case against Blanche focuses too much on narrow disagreements and not enough on broad, structural successes.

And National Review appears to be part of a trend, as its editorial is now joined by a similarly titled “Todd Blanche Is Unfit for Office” by The New York Times’ editorial board. The Times at least handwaves at President Trump’s “right to select an attorney general who shares his policy views” before explaining why this time is different. The focus is on Blanche’s perceived lack of independence — an issue the Times did not seem to focus on when then-Attorney General Eric Holder “referred to himself as” President Obama’s “wingman.” Department of Justice independence for me but not for thee.

I have had the privilege of spending the last three years working both in opposition to and with the Department of Justice. State attorneys general and their lawyers see the federal government from a vantage point that National Review’s editorial board does not occupy. We litigate with Main Justice, against it, and often in parallel. We feel the practical consequences of who runs that building. And from where I sit, the DOJ under Todd Blanche has been more responsive, more focused on actual public safety, and more respectful of the constitutional structure than it was at any point under President Biden.

Before getting to Blanche, let’s look at what “The Editors” — National Review’s editorial board — had to say about the Department of Justice under Garland. And remember, no editorial opposed Garland’s confirmation. The editors noted the “shameful pandering“ of a sweet deal given to two “well-compensated attorneys” who were “caught on tape throwing [a] firebomb into an unoccupied police car” in New York. There was the unprecedented effort by “the Justice Department under Merrick Garland … to weaponize the FDA’s approval to preclude states from enforcing their own laws” that protect unborn life. There was what the editors recognized as “lawfare” against President Trump before he took office. And while the editors didn’t cover it, National Review writer Andy McCarthy did a nice job covering “Attorney General Merrick Garland’s abominable October 2021 directive that the FBI harass and intimidate parents” by investigating them “as if they were domestic terrorists.” Seems pretty bad to me!

Unlike the dutifully partisan Garland, Blanche is eminently qualified for the job of attorney general — a fact even the National Review editors are forced to admit. Blanche spent nearly 15 years at the Department of Justice. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York — the most demanding federal prosecutor’s office in the country — and rose to co-chief of its violent crimes unit, supervising roughly two dozen prosecutors handling murders, kidnappings, and the kind of cases that determine whether ordinary people can walk their streets safely. Blanche then built a distinguished white-collar defense practice.

By any honest measure, that is a deeper resumé in the actual practice of criminal law than many confirmed attorneys general have brought to the job. One can disagree with Blanche’s clients or his politics, but the man knows how the department works. 

What National Review really objects to is not Blanche’s extensive experience but his client list — and really just one client: President Donald Trump. Blanche defended Trump during the norms-busting wave of prosecutions brought against him in 2023 and 2024. No Department of Justice had ever before prosecuted the former president. And even worse, that former president was the primary political opponent of the sitting president. 

The editors treat Blanche’s “fealty to Donald Trump” as original sin. But this isn’t the first time a president has selected a confidante as his attorney general. And defending an unpopular client against the machinery of the state is honorable; it is the tradition of John Adams representing the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. 

Nor were the prosecutions Blanche defended against ordinary cases. A New York hush-money theory was stretched into 34 felonies through legal contortions no prosecutor would have attempted against anyone not named Trump. (The editors called on the jury to acquit President Trump in that case.) A Florida classified-documents case was dismissed because the special counsel’s appointment was unlawful. If you believe, as I do and as many serious lawyers across the spectrum do, that those cases represented the politicization of criminal law, then the attorney who fought them was on the right side of the most important rule-of-law fight of the decade.

Here, the editorial collapses under its own weight. Having declared Blanche disqualified, the editors concede the positive case: that “we’re better off with Blanche, who has a strong prosecutorial background and has, reportedly, fought off at least some of the lawfare gambits.” And they admit their opposition is “less about the nominee than it is about the Justice Department.”

The president should have his choice as attorney general; if National Review does not believe any attorney general is appropriate, that undermines its specific claims about Blanche. National Review wants to have it both ways: to enjoy the reputational comfort of opposing a Trump nominee while quietly admitting that this particular nominee is better than the realistic alternatives. 

National Review’s closing standard for a senator considering Blanche’s nomination is one I would enthusiastically embrace: that the department must “enforce the law evenhandedly, without fear, favor, or political bias.” Conservatives saw firsthand how bad it is when that standard is not met — when the prior Justice Department raided a former president’s home, investigated parents who protested at school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists, and failed to protect Supreme Court justices from harassment (and almost assassination). Evenhandedness is a standard for everyone, or it is a cudgel for one side. Blanche understands the difference because he worked to oppose the abuse. That experience makes him more likely, not less, to insist on the neutral application of law.

And there has been much good at the department during Blanche’s tenure as first deputy attorney general and now acting attorney general. Over the past months, the DOJ has worked constructively with state attorneys general on violent crime, drug enforcement, and the rollback of regulatory overreach that exceeded federal statutory authority, including unlawful Biden-era gun restrictions that several states had challenged. That is what cooperative federalism is supposed to look like, and it is a marked improvement over the previous era, when Washington treated the states as adversaries to be subdued.

Todd Blanche is manifestly qualified, has shown his commitment to ending the lawfare that corroded public trust, and has earned the support of law-enforcement coalitions across the country. National Review’s editors know most of this; they said so themselves. They should follow their own logic to its conclusion. The Senate should confirm Todd Blanche.

Eric Wessan is the solicitor general of Iowa.