Is Todd Blanche Simply Morally Obtuse and Ethically Tone Deaf?

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma

Of all the charlatans, grifters, and ghouls in the Trump II playbill, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has always baffled me the most. I can’t figure out the motivations that drive him or the elaborate self-rationalizations that permit him to engage in wholesale misconduct and abuse of office.

I have been most confounded by his professional background. He spent more than a decade as a DOJ prosecutor in Manhattan, and another decade as a criminal defense attorney at major law firms in New York — which means that to spearhead DOJ politicization and weaponization, Blanche has had to set aside both the long-standing traditions of the Justice Department that he would have been immersed in and dispense with a criminal attorney’s instinctive revulsion at government overreach and prosecutorial abuse.

While I’ve encountered DOJers with little appreciation for DOJ tradition and defense attorneys who don’t fit the classic mold, it’s rare to find someone who embodies both of those departures from the norm. Add in that Blanche is 51, old enough to know better, that he had a solid previous career that wasn’t entirely dependent on Trump, and that nothing about his relatively modest past bears any obvious signs of a grasping ambition at the expense of all else, and I’m left to puzzle over his psychology, which I have neither the expertise nor access to meaningfully assess.

The inexplicable Blanche was on display at this week’s press conference announcing the shameful indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center. A seemingly nonplussed Blanche shrugged off the most pointed questions about what exactly the alleged fraud was, and made no attempt to offer assurances let alone solid evidence that this isn’t as political a prosecution as it appears on its face.

In a new story this morning, the NYT runs through a laundry list of bad acts Blanche has committed as acting attorney general. It’s framed in the context of Blanche shoring up his position against right-wing criticism in hopes of landing the permanent gig, or at least staying in the acting gig indefinitely, but let’s consider them on their own demerits:

• planning to revive the politicized prosecution of former FBI director James Comey, though on what grounds remains unclear;
• expecting to subpoena the bodyguards of Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis “possibly in connection with an investigation into her government-funded travel”;
• pushing ahead with putative cases against left-wing groups like the SPLC and Act Blue;
• green-lighting inquiries into Cassidy Hutchinson, the star witness of the House Jan. 6 committee;
• whipping greater urgency into the retributive investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan, including removing the career prosecutor overseeing it and replacing her with Trump loyalist Joe diGenova.

The NYT story also contains evidence of the contradiction that Blanche presents, crediting him — if that’s not too generous — with sending goofball Ed Martin out to pasture; being overruled after telling the White House there was insufficient evidence to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James; opposing the appoint of Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia to lead the James and Comey prosecutions; and cautioning against the immediate arrest of Comey for a social media post that was bizarrely trumped up into an assassination threat against the president.

It all leaves me with the unsatisfying conclusion that Blanche is simply morally obtuse and ethically tone deaf. Maybe that’s the simplest answer, but I’m left wanting a better explanation.

Digging Deeper on the Bogus SPLC Case

As the week as unfolded, I’m gratified that the public discourse has gradually moved toward greater recognition that the Trump DOJ’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center is a travesty:

• Former Alabama U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance: “It’s a warning to anyone who might consider cooperating with anti-hate groups in the future: ‘Don’t do it!’ It’s a message of intimidation from the leadership of DOJ, delivered for the benefit of their audience of one—if you align yourself against us, we can take you down. In essence, this indictment is about protecting domestic terror groups from exposure, not about prosecuting a real crime that SPLC committed.”
• Bloomberg: “The Justice Department relied on a lesser-known bank deception statute to indict the Southern Poverty Law Center while omitting an element needed to prove the crime: intent to influence a financial institution. The infirmities suggest federal prosecutors in the Middle District of Alabama who brought the case may have improperly instructed grand jurors, which could lead a judge to dismiss the case or demand transcripts of the typically-secretive proceedings in which DOJ obtained the indictment, said several defense lawyers and former white-collar prosecutors.”

‘I Stand By Every Single Word’

The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick talks about her exposé on FBI Director Kash Patel’s alleged drinking on the job and his subsequent defamation lawsuit against her and the publication: “One of the things that has most gratifying immediately after the story published was I have been inundated by additional sourcing, going up to the very highest levels of the government, thanking us for doing the work … providing us with additional corroborating information.”

The Purges: Trump DOJ Edition

Via a FOIA request, Reuters has tallied some of the staffing losses that DOJ and its components have suffered under Trump II:

• DOJ National Security Division: -38%
• ATF: -14%
• FBI: -7%
• DEA: -6%
• Bureau of Prisons: -6%

In total, DOJ employees 11,200 fewer people than it did during the ​fiscal year that ended three months before Trump began his second term, according to Reuters.

Down the Memory Hole

Leaning on the flimsy OLC memo that declared the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional, the White House Counsel’s Office has issued a new policy watering down document retention requirements, the WaPo reports.

Sign of the Times

An Army Special Forces master sergeant involved in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was indicted in federal court in Manhattan for allegedly using classified information on the operation to make $400,000 placing bets on Polymarket.

Latest on the Middle East …

• Hormuz Quagmire Alert: “He’s stuck with this, for as long as the strait remains closed,” an Iran expert tells the NYT, referring to Trump. “The speed with which this became a quagmire for the United States has been, also, quite stunning.”
• The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will be extended for three weeks after a second round of talks at the White House, President Trump announced.
• The Iran conflict has drained U.S. munitions to such a degree that some officials are warning that the United States can no longer fully defend Taiwan.

Pentagon Fires Ombudsman

The ombudsman for Stars & Stripes, charged by Congress with maintaining the independence of the military newspaper, was fired after speaking out against an overhaul of the storied publication that Trump officials accuse of being “woke,” the WaPo reports.

Thread of the Day

After his spectacular failure to push through a reauthorization of Section 702 in the dead of night last Thursday, Speaker Johnson is trying again—with a new proposal that’s almost identical to the one that failed last week. 1/18

— Liza Goitein (@lizagoitein.bsky.social) 2026-04-23T19:58:48.698Z

Mass Deportation Watch

• NYT: Trump DOJ Targets Hundreds of Citizens in New Push for Denaturalization
• WSJ: Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Has Continued Using a Waterfront Coast Guard House Since Ouster
• Dropsite News: Two Iranian Women in ICE Detention Are Not, In Fact, Related to Qasem Soleimani, Documents Show

Quote of the Day

“First of all, I think it’s very important that the unity or division of the church should not revolve around sexual matters. We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality I believe there are greater and more important issues such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion that would all take priority before that particular issue.”—Pope Leo XIV

Here’s his full answer. pic.twitter.com/haoCIPT9BA

— Christopher Hale (@ChristopherHale) April 23, 2026

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