Todd Blanche attorney general nomination faces Senate questions

Todd Blanche, who first drew national attention as a criminal defense lawyer for President Donald Trump, faces a Senate Judiciary hearing Wednesday to review his nomination by the Republican president to become the attorney general of the U.S.

Blanche, 51, has served as acting attorney general since early April, when Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi over her handling of issues related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump in a Truth Social post on Tuesday praised Blanche, calling him a “great lawyer, always very fair,” and writing, “every Republican Senator should vote to CONFIRM Todd Blanche, ASAP.”

But Bondi’s departure did not mean controversy over the DOJ’s conduct in connection with the release of documents related to Epstein — and other actions by the department with Blanche’s involvement — has gone away.

Democrats, who are the minority on the committee, are expected to grill Blanche on his decision in January when he was deputy attorney general not to publicly release millions of pages about Epstein after initially disclosing more than 3 million pages. Under a law passed by Congress in November, the DOJ is required to release all documents it has about Epstein.

A group of Epstein victims this week released a video urging the Senate to block Blanche as attorney general because their personal information was made public by the DOJ in the release of files even though that information should have been redacted.

The DOJ, in a Jan. 30 statement about the final release of the files, said those that were withheld fell into several categories, including duplicate documents from different investigations and those withheld under certain legal privileges.

Blanche is also certain to face questions about his decision to create a $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund for the DOJ to compensate people who were purportedly the victims of prosecutorial overreach by the Justice Department.

The fund, which Blanche said he canceled in the face of sharp criticism from Republican senators and Democrats, was part of an out-of-court settlement of a suit filed by Trump against the IRS over the leak of his tax records. While Blanche has said the fund won’t be created, Trump has floated the idea of reviving its creation.

That settlement included giving Trump, his family members and related business entities effective immunity from audits, prosecution or regulatory enforcement action by the IRS for tax returns filed up to the date of the settlement in May.

On Monday, a Miami federal judge in a scathing order said Trump had sued the IRS for an “improper purpose,” to obtain the appearance of “judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no…