SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- GLOW – Government Lawyers Oversight Watchdog, the first-ever non-profit dedicated to documenting the conduct of executive branch attorneys, condemns in the strongest terms the U.S. Senate's confirmation of Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States by a vote of 50-49 earlier today.
Twenty-six days ago, a United States District Judge found that under Mr. Blanche's leadership, the Department of Justice abdicated its duty to defend the United States. The Judge also characterized Blanche's sworn testimony to Congress as "at best, misleading, and at worst, disingenuous," and ordered her findings forwarded to the New York State Bar, which licenses him. Rather than punishing or condemning this misconduct, the Senate has promoted him to head the Department whose purpose he abandoned.
This is not a close question. The office of Attorney General exists to represent the United States and oversee the faithful enforcement of federal law. Mr. Blanche's record is a sustained demonstration that when the interests of the United States collide with the interests of Donald Trump, his former client, Mr. Blanche chooses his former client.
"There is no polite way to describe what happened today," said Omri Marian, GLOW's President. "The Senate confirmed a lawyer whose conduct is presently before his bar regulator, on findings made by a federal judge, that he put a former client's interests above the interests of his current client—the United States of America. Mr. Blanche did not merely fail to defend the United States in Trump v. IRS, he signed away $1.776 billion of the public's money, issued an immunity order for his former client's family over his own signature, and then told the Congress of the United States that no judge could review any of it. A lawyer who did that in private practice would be facing disbarment. Instead, the Senate handed him the Department of Justice." Mr. Blanche's eleventh-hour rescission of the weaponization fund is a concession in form and nothing in substance; it withdraws only the fund he had already told Congress was dead while leaving intact the separate May 19 order immunizing the President, his sons, and their businesses from audits and claims for past conduct—the very provision a federal judge found contravened 26 U.S.C. § 7217.
He turned the Department of Justice into his former client's law firm. In Trump v. Internal Revenue Service, the President sued an agency he controls. Under Blanche, The Department of Justice never entered an appearance, never raised the statute-of-limitations and damages defenses its own lawyers had pressed in materially identical cases, and never filed a single pleading. Instead, Mr. Blanche signed a purported settlement committing $1.776 billion in taxpayer funds to an "Anti-Weaponization Fund," and issued, over his signature alone, an order purporting to immunize the President, his adult children, and their businesses from claims and from future IRS audits, a provision Judge Kathleen M. Williams found contravenes 26 U.S.C. § 7217's prohibition on executive branch interference with taxpayer audits. On July 13, 2026, the Court found the entire proceeding was pursued in bad faith for the improper purpose of dishonestly advancing a political narrative, wrote that it was "risible" to suggest the parties were ever adverse, and directed the Clerk of The Court to transmit the order to the New York State Bar.
He shut down a civil rights investigation into the killing of Renée Good and opened one against her instead. After ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, on January 7, 2026, Mr. Blanche declared publicly that there was "no basis" for a federal investigation. Reporting later established that the FBI had in fact already opened a civil rights investigation, that aides to Mr. Blanche directed federal prosecutors and agents in Minnesota to close it, and that the Department instead sought a warrant against Ms. Good herself and opened an investigation into her widow. Six Civil Rights Division attorneys, six career prosecutors in Minnesota, and the FBI agent in charge of the investigation resigned rather than participate. Mr. Blanche then publicly accused Minnesotans protesting Ms. Good's killing of "insurrection," accused the Governor of Minnesota and the Mayor of Minneapolis of terrorism, and threatened to stop them "by whatever means necessary."
He punished lawyers for telling the truth. Blanche placed DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni on leave and later fired him after Mr. Reuveni truthfully told a court that Kilmar Abrego Garcia's deportation was an error. He fired Elizabeth Oyer, the United States Pardon Attorney, for refusing to blindly follow the administration request to restore gun ownership rights to an individual with a history of domestic violence without further investigation. Blanche accused Oyer of lying about her own termination and sent armed deputies to her home with a letter threatening her over her plan to testify under oath before Congress.
He declared war on the judiciary and laughed at his own bar association. In November 2025, Blanche told a Federalist Society audience that there is a "war" against the federal judiciary and urged young lawyers to enlist. Fifty former federal judges called it a grave threat to the rule of law. When the New York State Bar Association denounced the remarks and reminded him that a lawyer who abandons the constitutional oath is subject to discipline "even if they work for the Department of Justice," Mr. Blanche's entire public response was: "LOL."
These are highlights, not an inventory. The full record of Blanche's disqualifying behavior is documented in Mr. Blanche's profile on the Government Lawyers Database.
GLOW is particularly alarmed by the behavior of Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who identified precisely what was wrong with this nomination, said so publicly, extracted an insufficient concession, and then voted to confirm Blanche anyway.
Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis spent weeks insisting that the "anti-weaponization" fund and the immunity granted to the President's family were disqualifying. They were right. What they accepted in exchange for their votes was an order Mr. Blanche signed on August 2 rescinding his own May 18 order, a document he is free to revoke the moment he is sworn in, accompanied by an unsigned Department statement purporting to narrow the immunity order, which itself remains fully in force.
Neither senator faces another election. Senator Tillis is retiring and Senator Cornyn lost his primary. They were, uniquely among their colleagues, free to vote their conscience without cost. They voted instead to install as Attorney General the very lawyer whose conduct they had spent a month describing as indefensible, in exchange for a promise he alone has the power to break.
"Every senator who voted yes today did so with the court's order in front of them," Marian added. "No one can claim they did not know. The findings were public, the bar referral was public, the testimony the judge called disingenuous was given to their own institution. History will record their vote—and so will we."
GLOW again honors the government attorneys who refused. The six senior attorneys of the DOJ Civil Rights Division and the six career prosecutors in Minnesota who resigned over the Renée Good investigation; former Treasury General Counsel Brian Morrissey, who resigned the day the Trump v. IRS "settlement" was announced rather than lend it his name; Erez Reuveni and Elizabeth Oyer, who told the truth and paid for it; and many others who are recognized in our database as Defenders of the Rule of Law. Their actions, not those of the man confirmed today, represent what the Department of Justice is supposed to be.
GLOW – Government Lawyers Oversight Watchdog is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in April 2025 to document the professional conduct of government attorneys and to promote commitment to the rule of law. Through the freely accessible Government Lawyers Database at glowlaw.org, GLOW compiles public, document-linked records of how lawyers have conducted themselves while serving in or representing the U.S. Executive Branch — and honors as "Defenders of the Rule of Law" those who uphold their oath, sometimes at great personal cost.
SOURCE GLOW - Government Lawyers Oversight Watchdog
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