Todd Blanche Could Never Be As Partisan As ‘Wingman’ Eric Holder

Left-wing politicians are trying to sink Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination to the full post, noting he was President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. But those same Democrats vigorously supported Barack Obama’s hyper-partisan fixer, Eric Holder.

Holder is infamous for being known as Obama’s “wingman,” doing Obama’s personal bidding, conducting lawfare against conservatives, dropping the prosecutions of political allies (especially if they were black), and arming Mexican drug cartels to wage war on Americans.

Every step of the way, Democrats defended him and denied his partisan hackery. But when it comes to Blanche, who has not shown the same instinct over his short tenure in the acting position, the same people are crying foul.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, “‘Attorney General’ might appear on Blanche’s business card, but we all know the job description would stay the same: Trump’s fixer, bagman, hired gun.”

Yet even after Holder’s rocky and controversial tenure, Schumer maintained, “AG Holder was like ‘Horatius at the Bridge’ preventing or slowing down the regressive march to take away people’s hard-earned rights.”

‘My People’ Can’t Be Guilty of Voter Intimidation

One of the first things Holder did upon taking office was drop a 2008 presidential election voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party who stood in the entrance of a Philadelphia polling place in their paramilitary uniforms, one wielding a billy club, shouting racial slurs and intimidating voters and election workers, including a white poll watcher.

The outgoing Bush administration promptly filed charges, but Holder dropped almost all of them soon after Obama took office in order to protect “my people.”

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigated the decision, but Holder’s Justice Department “refused to allow anyone with firsthand knowledge of the lawsuit to testify” and refused to provide documents requested by the commission.

However, two career staff attorneys testified that the Justice Department did not think that voting rights laws should be enforced equally for all Americans, and that some attorneys declined to work cases where the victim was white and the defendant was black.

Holder was simply following the clear preferences of President Barack Obama and his administration, which consistently showed preferences for black persons over whites, and declined to treat them equally under the law. (Recall, for example, Obama’s “if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” response to the Trayvon Martin case or his giving fuel to the sham Black Lives Matter, anti-police movement in its treatment of the Michael Brown case).

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, maintains that “Todd Blanche is Donald Trump’s lawyer — not YOURS,” but he heaped praise on Holder after he oversaw some of the biggest abuses of his office to date.

“The Attorney General also has revitalized the Justice Department’s critical role in protecting the civil and human rights of all Americans, spearheading efforts to prevent discrimination at the ballot box and to reform our outdated sentencing policies for nonviolent drug offenses,” Durbin said upon Holder’s resignation.

IRS Targeting Conservatives

Holder also oversaw the sham “investigation” into the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after that agency, following the orders of Obama, targeted exclusively conservative nonprofits for ruin in an attempt to stop their criticism of the Obama administration.

Holder made public statements calling the actions of the IRS “outrageous and unacceptable,” but then turned around and assigned the case to “a staff attorney who was an Obama donor.” He also oversaw a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that never intended to prosecute and declined requests for a special prosecutor. Justice Department attorneys under Holder were also implicated in the IRS scandal.

After opening the investigation and dragging its feet, Holder’s DOJ disappeared the case into the ether and closed it with zero accountability.

According to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Blanche is a “hatchet man” who “acts as Trump’s personal attorney and political henchman” and is “costing the Department its customary ‘presumption of regularity.’”

Whitehouse had no such criticism for Holder, stating, “Thank you, Attorney General #Holder, for restoring confidence & morale and bringing honor & dignity to @TheJusticeDept for the last 6 years.”

Fast and Furious

The Obama administration pursued a reckless plan to heavily arm Mexican drug cartels, claiming the purpose was to track the weapons to more senior members. Instead, the guns ended up at crime scenes and caused the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Instead of owning up to the botched plan, Holder instigated a cover-up, stonewalling Congress for the political protection of the Obama administration.

The cover-up ran so deep that Holder initially testified before the Senate that Fast and Furious did not, in fact, contribute to the death of Terry and refused to apologize to his family. He also refused to give key information about it.

Later, Holder admitted the operation was “fundamentally flawed.”

For the cover-up, the House of Representatives held Holder in contempt of Congress on two counts, the first time in U.S. history that a sitting cabinet member had been held in contempt by either house.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who was a member of the House during the entirety of Holder’s tenure but who now has a vote in Blanche’s confirmation, has claimed that Blanche “ignored ethics and legal advice” as Trump apparently plans to “use the Department to exact vengeance against his political enemies.”

However, when the House voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress for his Fast and Furious debacle, Schiff not only voted “no” (numerous Democrats voted “yes”), but described the bipartisan vote as a “partisan hunt for the scalp of a senior administration official.” He further defended Holder as being “forthright throughout,” and asserted that Holder was apparently “not briefed on the details of Operation Fast and Furious until after the serious problems became public.”

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.