Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been on the job for less than two months, and he’s already made himself hard to ignore.

The president’s restless base is paying attention, and his reputation, at least from the outside, is that he is more aggressive than the woman he replaced.

That read isn’t entirely wrong, insiders tell the Daily Caller. Blanche’s years of federal experience and his time as number two at DOJ have left him with his hands on a lot of projects and the institutional knowledge to actually move them.

“He knows how to uncork the bottle quickly and where the levers of power are in DOJ,” a former Justice official tells the Caller.

In less than two months, he’s indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center and former FBI Director James Comey, and signed off on a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for victims of political prosecutions.

The pace has left Trump allies impressed. But they’re quick to add context: Blanche didn’t build these cases from scratch. He inherited a loaded weapon and knew exactly how to fire it.

“Pam Bondi had to take all the slings and arrows to get where we are now. And now Todd is taking the baton, and he’s the next man up,” Mike Davis, Trump ally and founder of the Article III project, told the Caller.

Trump dismissed Bondi from the Attorney General position in early April. At the time of her firing, a White House official told the Caller that there is no “bad blood” between the president and the AG, but that he was overall dissatisfied with her job performance. In short, the president wanted Bondi to be more aggressive and bring forward more prosecutions.

Bondi, who was never a federal prosecutor, faced a steep learning curve navigating the inner workings of the DOJ, the former official told the Caller. It made her transition to AG more complicated. But her tenure, insiders say, was more spent laying groundwork for the results she wouldn’t get to see through.

Blanche doesn’t have the same problem.

The Acting AG came up as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, one of the country’s most demanding federal districts, and later served as the president’s personal criminal defense attorney before entering the Trump administration as number two at the DOJ. By the time he stepped into the top job, he already knew which cases were live, which prosecutors to trust, and how to push a grand jury toward an indictment.

“The advantage of a number two rising to become the acting number one is that you know where all the balls are in the air,” a former DOJ official told the Caller. “Todd could immediately grab some of those balls and put them into play.”

Nineteen days after Bondi’s firing, Blanche called a press conference alongside FBI Director Kash Patel to announce an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The left-wing activist group had been covertly directing millions to individuals tied to white supremacist and other extremist organizations, Blanche said. The announcement was celebrated as a win for conservative organizations, many of whom were targeted by the SPLC and labeled as “hate groups.”

A few days later, Blanche’s DOJ unveiled a second indictment against former FBI Director James Comey. This one was tied to a since-deleted social media post featuring the numbers “8647,” which some interpreted as a veiled call to kill the president.

Under Bondi, the department brought an indictment against him in September over allegations that he lied and obstructed a congressional investigation during 2020 testimony. But that case was dismissed in November.

A DOJ official told the Caller the SPLC case had been in the works for some time, but that Blanche’s arrival as acting AG was what got it across the finish line. His familiarity with grand juries, prosecutors, and the mechanics of building a federal case made the difference.

“A lot of that job is knowing the justice system and how to get things across the finish line. Having that understanding, I think, is where he has found success,” the DOJ official told the Caller.

Still, Bondi’s DOJ played a role in helping build the case, insiders explained.

“I think Blanche is doing a good job, but I don’t think that they’ve just suddenly gotten more aggressive. I, some of this work, particularly like the SPLC, as a result of work that was clearly in progress when Bondi left,” von Spakosky added.

Davis agreed.

“[Blanche is] taking it to the next level, from a strong foundation behind the scenes, to action in public… you can’t just wave a magic wand and bring indictments or predicate investigations. That takes a lot of work. It takes months of work,” he told the Caller.

Whether Blanche gets a permanent nomination remains an open question, and it may stay that way deliberately.

“Congress takes more recess than kindergarten,” a former DOJ official told the Caller. “Why would you waste political capital trying to confirm Todd when what happens if he doesn’t get confirmed?”

Politico has reported there may be a loophole allowing Blanche to remain in the acting role beyond the standard 210-day limit. The White House, for its part, isn’t signaling any urgency to change course.

“President Trump has a great relationship with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and is very pleased with the job he’s doing so far,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Caller.

In the meantime, Davis has a prediction for Blanche’s next move.

“I have very publicly, for four years since the Mar-a-Lago raid, called for a federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida to indict Obama for their conspiracy against rights — against President Trump, his top aides, and his allies,” Davis said. “I fully expect this to happen under Todd Blanche.”

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House Correspondent

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