Michael Barbaro: From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Michael Barbaro: To be confirmed as the next Attorney General, Todd Blanche must convince members of the US Senate that despite how political the Department of Justice has now become, it would be even worse without him at the top. Today, as his confirmation hearings begin, my colleague Glenn Thrush recounts the unlikely story of how Blanche became Trump's legal enforcer. It's Wednesday, July 15th.

Michael Barbaro: Hey, Glenn.

Glenn Thrush: Hello. Good morning to you, sir.

Michael Barbaro: Good morning to you, sir.

Glenn Thrush: Or is there an echo in here?

Michael Barbaro: Is there an echo in here?

Michael Barbaro: All right. Well, on to business. Glenn, in a few hours, Wednesday morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin confirmation hearings for President Trump's next pick to be his Attorney General, Todd Blanche. And increasingly, it looks like this hearing is going to be pretty complicated and the outcome genuinely uncertain?

Glenn Thrush: We're at a pretty precarious moment for the Department of Justice and for Todd Blanche. Over the past 6 weeks, really at President Trump's prompting, Blanche oversaw the creation of this incredibly controversial and highly unusual $1.8 billion fund to compensate purported victims of Biden and Obama era Justice Department overreach, the J6 defendants, and people who were subject to other investigations. And in late May, the Senate Republicans just had it. They called in Blanche, and for about an hour grilled him, lambasted him, told him it was totally unacceptable. So, the dynamic here is the Republicans in the Senate have been incredibly skeptical of recent moves that Blanche has made in coordination with Trump. Now, Blanche has spent the better part of a month trying to clean that stuff up, but there are still several members in the Senate, and a couple of members on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who really have serious tough questions for him. And this is really a first for someone who is facing cabinet scrutiny.

Michael Barbaro: What do you mean a first?

Glenn Thrush: We're just in a totally different environment than the first wave of Trump cabinet nominees. They all basically got a pass. There was some tough questioning, but that was a period of time early on when Republicans were just inclined to line up and give the president as much authority as possible. We're long past that, and the gravitational pull of the midterm elections is forcing a lot of these Republicans who had been in line to start raising some serious questions.

Michael Barbaro: So, there's a lot of skepticism from increasingly independent-minded, agitated, midterm-fearful Republican senators of Todd Blanche. Let's talk about how Blanche became Trump's pick for Attorney General, how he got onto Trump's radar, and became the person he hopes will define the remaining years of the second term when it comes to the Department of Justice. Just tell us the Blanche story.

Glenn Thrush: So, this is what's perhaps most interesting. There are not a lot of data points in his biography that would have indicated he would have gone down this path. Blanche, from the interviews I've done over the past year and a half, was a pretty vanilla federal prosecutor from the Southern District of New York. It's been described as the Yankee Stadium of federal prosecutor's offices. That's where Rudy Giuliani sort of gained his fame. Blanche rises through the ranks of that office and like a lot of these guys got to mid life and decided he wanted to cash in.

Michael Barbaro: Right.

Glenn Thrush: So he jumps to a big-time white-shoe law firm in 2017 in New York. And at some point in time Boris Epstein, Donald Trump's long-time legal adviser, connects with Blanche and enlists him to the criminal defense team representing Paul Manafort, Trump's first campaign chairman. And that really throws Blanche into this rotation of Trump criminal defense lawyers. And what's fascinating is in the period after Trump loses in 2020, Blanche had a decision to make at this point in time. He could have cut bait from Trump. It really looked like Trump was a losing cause. But instead what he did was he insisted on representing Trump at this low ebb moment over the objections of the leadership of his law firm and actually broke from his firm, started his own firm, and threw in his lot with Trump. And like so many of these entrepreneurial characters in Trump's second term, that decision is what really bonded him to Trump. He took a big risk on Trump and that to the president is really the ultimate bond.

Michael Barbaro: So just to be clear, Blanche quits this prestigious white-shoe law firm job he has, the one he took to make money once he left government in order to take Trump on as a client. That's the bet.

Glenn Thrush: Yeah, and I think he made a decision that this was a big shot. Not everybody gets an opportunity to represent a former president of the United States. And we have seen that element of his character. It's almost like the fear of missing out that we talk about in Washington. Blanche wanted to be in the center of action and I think he was willing to risk kind of a pedestrian successful career in the law to go for the big prize.

Michael Barbaro: So, once Blanche decides to work with Trump, what ends up being the nature of this partnership between defense lawyer and his client?

Glenn Thrush: So, the big moment came in the spring of 2023 and when Alvin Bragg, Manhattan District Attorney, indicted Donald Trump on 34 counts. This is the hush money case that involves Stormy Daniels, diversion of Trump Organization cash to potentially pay her off. Blanche comes in and he really exhibits some of this tenacity and willingness to go to the mat for Donald Trump that has kind of characterized his relationship with the president and endeared him to Trump. The big moment that people have talked to me about and really remember was the cross-examination of the former Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Michael Barbaro: Star witness in that case because he, according to Michael Cohen, organizes the payment to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet.

Glenn Thrush: Yeah, and Blanche just sets about in sort of classic criminal defense lawyer fashion to dismantle Michael Cohen, demolishing his integrity. So, he berates Cohen on the stand and just accuses him of being a flat-out liar. And then he reminds Cohen that Cohen had once called Trump a dictator and said that the former president belonged in a cage like an animal.

Michael Barbaro: Right, he was trying to make the point to the jury that Cohen so had it in for Trump that he could not be objective and truthful in his testimony about Trump.

Glenn Thrush: Exactly. And even though Trump didn't prevail, that kind of fight really impressed the president. And Blanche's performance in general was regarded as being pretty solid in a case that seemed to be an uphill climb for Trump. That said, sources have told me that there was a lot of back and forth, you know, between these court dates, and Trump, as he is with all of his lawyers, was not afraid to speak his mind, was not afraid to yell at Blanche, and Blanche, I am told, while he was respectful to Trump, was also not afraid to express his opinion directly to Trump.

Michael Barbaro: So, they develop a trusting, candid, maybe even at times kind of fiery respect for each other.

Glenn Thrush: Yeah, I mean, like every relationship with Trump, it's a one-sided relationship. He's an employee, but he was one of those very few people who could truth tell to Trump, who could tell him, 'No, I am doing this to save you.' And it's right around this time that Blanche's embrace of Trump becomes really personal. He switches from having been a Democrat to the Republican Party and moves to Florida, not too far from Trump.

Michael Barbaro: But of course, the hush money case wasn't the only case facing Trump at that time. He had other big federal cases against him that Blanche is working on.

Glenn Thrush: This is what really puts Todd Blanche on the national stage. Trump is indicted on the classified documents case in Florida and his activities around the January 6th attack on the capital. Trump is dissatisfied with his initial legal team and he puts Blanche in charge. And from then on Blanche proves himself to be a manager of this sort of ungainly team of lawyers. And he hones in on what people call a stall and brawl strategy.

Michael Barbaro: The former president is currently embroiled in several cases. His approach is the same, delay, delay, delay. Run the clock out to get it as close to the 2024 election as possible and really write legal briefs almost as if they were true social posts. He fully embraces Trump's argument that he is the victim of a witch hunt. That's been the core of Todd Blanche's legal argument for his entire association with Donald Trump.

Glenn Thrush: And the district attorney has turned what is actually a completely political issue into a political prosecution. There is no daylight between the two on that issue. The legal argument and the political argument are completely one. And what is so important about those briefs is when you file them, even if they read like campaign documents, they set in motion a clock and a judge has to rule and it takes time and what we all remember from that period is that led by Blanche, Trump's legal team delays these two federal cases week after week, month after month, and ultimately they do run out the clock.

Michael Barbaro: I mean, it doesn't seem like it's a super sophisticated strategy, but it works. Ultimately, Trump resuscitates his political career, uses these indictments as the fuel for his second successful presidential campaign, and he gets reelected, and the cases get thrown out.

Glenn Thrush: Right, because as we would all learn during this period, the federal government cannot indict a sitting president, so these cases just fall away.

Michael Barbaro: That's right. And all of the sudden this big bet that Todd Blanche made a couple of years earlier is about to pay off. We'll be right back.

Michael Barbaro: Glenn, talk us through exactly how this bet that Blanche had made to align himself with Trump at Trump's lowest point starts to pay off once Trump is back in the White House.

Glenn Thrush: Well, Blanche wants a top job at DOJ. He wants the top job at DOJ. He doesn't get it, but instead he gets the position of Deputy Attorney General, which is probably the most powerful position in Washington that people don't know about. He runs the day-to-day operations of the department, and he's particularly powerful because his boss is so weak. Pam Bondi is a second-choice attorney general. She's the former AG in Florida, and she's just not prepared for the job. And Blanche winds up having even more power than most Deputy Attorney Generals have. And from the very beginning he and his right-hand man, Emil Bove, begin enacting key elements of Trump's plan. First and foremost, it involves demoting, marginalizing, and flat-out firing career staff that they considered to have been part of the Jack Smith investigations and other things that flagged employees as being anti-Trump.

Michael Barbaro: Right, they start to fire anyone who touched the classified documents investigation or the January 6th investigation. They start seeking out revenge inside the Department of Justice.

Glenn Thrush: Yeah, the first 6 weeks of Blanche's tenure was just this torrent of stories that we wrote about teams being fired. The National Security Division, one of the most important parts of the department, was essentially dismantled. The Public Integrity Unit, which investigates public corruption, was the core of Jack Smith's team, was reduced from 30 to two staffers under Blanche's initial leadership. Blanche saw this as a nest of vipers. He imbibed the arguments that he made in court. So, he had very little sympathy for most of the people who worked for him. So, he completely reshaped the department and really isolated the Attorney General and the politically appointed leadership from the rest of the building. So, he creates this environment straight out of the box.

Michael Barbaro: Beyond cleaning house at the Department of Justice, how is Blanche advising the president as he's starting to test the bounds of the law in those first weeks and months of the second term?

Glenn Thrush: Basically, what his job quickly evolves into is fielding these demands from the White House and from MAGA folks outside of the building to go after Trump's enemies or people who have gone after Republicans in the past or to protect people who they perceived as being persecuted by the Biden administration. So, there's this massive energy coming at Blanche of demands for him to do things and Pam Bondi as well. And Blanche has to curate these things and this is where things get really hairy. And Blanche occupies this middle role where he is in the broad sense committed both publicly and privately to executing Trump's desire to investigate these people while at the same time putting on his hat as a prosecutor, deferring to his own experience and to some extent deferring to the career staff, and determining what moves are legal, what moves are practical, and what can't be done. And very quickly Blanche falls into a pattern of essentially acting as an advisor to Trump of saying you could try to do this legally, but your chances of succeeding in court are minimal.

Michael Barbaro: Mhm.

Glenn Thrush: And the biggest example of this, the one that still looms large over the department, was the decision to prosecute Letitia James, the New York State Attorney General, and James Comey, the former FBI director, on various charges in Northern Virginia. Blanche advises the president and the president's staff that this is not a good idea.

Michael Barbaro: Right. Just remind people Letitia James is indicted on I believe mortgage fraud. James Comey, former FBI director, is indicted for allegedly lying to Congress.

Glenn Thrush: Right. Blanche tells the president, "Look, you could do this. I'm not saying that it is outside of your authority to do, but that your chances of succeeding with the jury, grand jury in Virginia are very low and your chances of getting an actual conviction are practically zero."

Michael Barbaro: Right. And he would know because he's a former criminal defense attorney.

Glenn Thrush: Exactly. He's essentially giving Trump the kind of no BS advice that he gave him as a defense attorney. And as Blanche learned then, you know, you could lead the horse to water.

Michael Barbaro: [laughter] Right?

Glenn Thrush: But sometimes the horse wants to indict the former FBI director even if the case isn't very strong.

Michael Barbaro: And as we know, without getting into the gritty details here, the whole thing blows up. And Blanche's initial advice has proven to be right.

Glenn Thrush: Mhm. Not observed, but ultimately correct.

Michael Barbaro: Exactly.

Glenn Thrush: We've had powerful attorneys general, but this is an entirely different situation. So, this view that Trump has of the Justice Department being an extension of his will, and Blanche's essential acquiescence to that model, are completely new in terms of the annals of the department.

Michael Barbaro: Glenn, what you're describing helps, I think, to explain why Republican senators, who are now being asked to confirm Todd Blanche as the next attorney general, have some real questions. They recognize that Trump sees Blanche basically as his personal attorney atop the Department of Justice. They see these failed, overreaching, strained prosecutions of Trump's enemies, and they have some real concerns.

Glenn Thrush: And Michael, we have not even talked about the Jeffrey Epstein files yet, which is a looming huge question. You know, Blanche along with Pam Bondi, we've reported, were the ones who went to Donald Trump to tell him precisely how many times and in what context he was mentioned in these files. So, he's playing this very ambiguous back and forth run on the Epstein files. That's going to be a big issue. I'm sure he's going to get grilled on it in the hearing. But look, I think his big selling point to Republicans is some version of "I am the least bad option you could possibly have." As Deputy Attorney General and as Acting Attorney General for the past couple of months, "forget my public statements, quietly behind the scenes, I'm working the phones, I'm keeping a lot of really bad things from happening."

Michael Barbaro: Well, is there truth to that?

Glenn Thrush: I think there is some element of truth to that. He's one of the most ambiguous, hard-to-pin-down characters I've ever covered, right? He seems different things at different times. I think because he's a man who's very much in the middle here. He is, for instance, the guy who seems to have talked Donald Trump out of going after Jerome Powell, the former Fed chair, for these excessive renovations at the Fed headquarters. That would have put a major, major wedge between Trump and Senate Republicans who did not want to see that kind of destabilization.

Michael Barbaro: Right. And ultimately, Trump drops that investigation, but he did start it.

Glenn Thrush: Exactly. And inside the department, I think probably one of the most interesting dynamics has been Blanche's conflict with a character by the name of Ed Martin, who was inserted by the White House into the Justice Department to run this so-called anti-weaponization working group, which was created essentially to investigate all these grievances that MAGA and Trump had about the Biden administration. They were looking to prosecution of the J6ers, alleged anti-Christian and anti-Catholic bias, and a whole host of other issues. Martin is a guy who believes in naming and shaming people. That a legitimate use of the Justice Department isn't just to prosecute and investigate, it is to just get people's names out there in public in a political way so that they're embarrassed and that they have to lawyer up.

Michael Barbaro: Mhm.

Glenn Thrush: We've obtained some emails over the last couple of days that show this tension between Blanche and Martin. We've known they had clashed over the months, but what we didn't really know was Blanche telling Martin, "Look, you're not abiding by Justice Department rules. You're talking publicly about grand jury testimony. This is not cool. I don't want you out there doing that." And eventually, earlier this year, Blanche sidelined Ed Martin. So, that I think is the biggest data point that Blanche has, in fact, exercised something of a moderating influence.

Michael Barbaro: Fascinating.

Glenn Thrush: And then, of course, there's the anti-weaponization fund.

Michael Barbaro: Mhm.

Glenn Thrush: Blanche has tried to play something of a moderating role on that one, too, right? He's attempted to walk it back a bit after the political backlash to kind of show Trump that this is not something that is ultimately going to work out for the administration. But then again, you get that contradiction. He could have refused to sign off on it in the first place.

Michael Barbaro: Right.

Glenn Thrush: A lot of stuff has gotten past him, and there's no question that the department has far less autonomy and independence than at any point in its history.

Michael Barbaro: Mhm. So, where do things currently stand as Blanche makes the case to Senate Republicans that things could be worse. They could be much worse. And these Republicans say, "Well, thank you for not making them perhaps worse, but we don't like a lot of what we're seeing. We didn't like the fact that the weaponization fund got all the way to birth. We don't like some of the prosecutions we're seeing. What does that mean for the math of confirmation?"

Glenn Thrush: Well, it's a tricky dynamic for Blanche. It only takes one Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote against Blanche to essentially kill the nomination by boxing it up in committee. And right now there are a couple of committee members who have expressed some skepticism about Blanche. Right now I would say the main Republican who could present a serious problem is John Cornyn from Texas who was ousted in his primary and really has nothing left to lose.

Michael Barbaro: Right, because Trump is the reason he got ousted. Trump turned against him because Cornyn was insufficiently enthusiastic in endorsing him in 2024.

Glenn Thrush: And Cornyn is a guy with a center of gravity. He is a senator with a capital S. Right? And he was very, very hostile to the notion of the creation of the anti-weaponization fund, but more to the point, there was a second deal signed by Blanche that would essentially grant immunity to Donald Trump and his family for tax investigations. And that appears to be a big sticking point for John Cornyn who has refused to commit to supporting Blanche prior to the hearing and he's refused to even say that he's leaning towards Blanche. That could prove to be a very big problem for Blanche if he can't resolve that issue.

Michael Barbaro: Right, because that's something that Blanche has not backed down from. Unlike the weaponization fund where Blanche concedes, this isn't going to happen, maybe it wasn't a good idea, he has never backed away from this IRS immunity deal.

Glenn Thrush: That's right, because Trump really cares about this. And if he gets out of the committee, he still has to get confirmed by the larger Senate. And you know, that'll happen a month, month and a half from now. Dynamics have shifting really, really fast and there are a couple of other senators who could be no votes. Cassidy, another a lame duck senator from Louisiana, has shown an inclination to buck the administration. And then you get Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, who is very independent and very critical of the Trump administration. She's also been noncommittal. So, there's a lot of game here left to play.

Michael Barbaro: Hm. So, what happens to Todd Blanche if the Senate doesn't confirm him? He has been the acting Attorney General for quite a while now. Does he just remain that way? What happens?

Glenn Thrush: Under the general guidelines in the law, Blanche can remain pretty much indefinitely as acting Attorney General until Donald Trump leaves office.

Michael Barbaro: Hm.

Glenn Thrush: But, that said, it is very important to Todd Blanche personally to get to the apex of this organization through a Senate confirmation. And in terms of the general legitimacy and the capacity to control your own government, it is really important as a token of a president who sees his power as the central facet of his political life to get this thing done through a Senate that he, again, views as he does Todd Blanche as essentially helpmates and employees.

Michael Barbaro: Hm. So, when we think about the bet that Blanche made early on to go all in with Trump and how yes, it is certainly paid off in the sense that Trump won a second term and Blanche got to be at the Department of Justice, the final payoff for Blanche is Senate confirmation. And all the things he has to do to keep the president happy may make it very hard for him to get these Senate Republicans to give him that final payoff. That's the central tension of being the attorney general in Trump's second term.

Glenn Thrush: You know, and that's the big paradox. What Blanche has had to do to get this nomination, to get Trump's support, might be the very thing that undermines his capacity to be confirmed. Because this is the Justice Department, even after everything that has happened in the last year and a half, there is the expectation among senators, even Republicans who support Donald Trump, that this department provides a sense of legitimacy, is a bullwark for rule of law, and should not be undermined and degraded in the way that some of these Republicans believe that it already has been.

Michael Barbaro: Well, Glenn, thank you very much. Great talking to you. We'll be right back.

Michael Barbaro: Here's what else you need to know today. In unusually personal testimony on Tuesday, two members of the Supreme Court, Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett, answered questions from Congress about the court's request for millions of dollars more in security to protect the justices at work and at home.

Supreme Court Justice: So, I thought I would just share a little bit about how the threats have affected me and my family personally. They have required me to my my children to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about.

Supreme Court Justice: For some of us, those threats have come very close, and all of us live with the knowledge that they may again materialize.

Michael Barbaro: Kagan told lawmakers that the court expects a 38% increase in threats this year, following a 25% increase last year. And the Times reports that the Trump administration has ordered federal immigration officers to largely end their practice of stopping vehicles as they conduct their operations after those stops resulted in two shooting deaths over the past week. One of those deaths occurred in Texas, the other in Maine.

Michael Barbaro: Today's episode was produced by Mooj Zadie, Eric Krupke, Alex Stern, and Olivia Natt. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Rob Zipko with help from Mark George. Contains music by Marion Lozano, Rowan Nesto, Brad Fisher, and Diane Wong. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.