Todd Blanche takes over the Justice Department, where there’s no escaping the Epstein files shadow | CNN Politics

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who President Donald Trump tapped Thursday to serve as the interim head of the Justice Department, managed the day-to-day operations of the department over the past year, often taking a more public-facing role when Pam Bondi was in hot water with White House officials. Early in the administration, in fact, the White House told the now-former attorney general she could not appear on Fox News for a time amid fallout over the Justice Department’s handling of making parts of the documents related to Jeffrey Epstein public. Blanche appeared in her absence, helming the administration’s defense over the drawn-out Epstein debacle. Pam Bondi was destined to fail. But she also made it worse Blanche was Trump’s defense attorney across several criminal cases the then-former president faced following his first term in office, one of several members of Trump’s legal team given key DOJ or judiciary posts. When Blanche took the deputy attorney general position, his experience as a former prosecutor and as a lawyer at a large law firm in New York was seen by career officials as an encouraging sign that the department’s institutional norms would be pro