Todd Blanche's Law License Now At Risk

Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney gets slammed with potential disciplinary proceedings.

Todd Blanche has watched far too many cautionary tales play out for his fellow defense attorneys to play dumb about what’s coming down the pike for him. Not even a week ago, I predicted that the acting Attorney General – who, coincidentally, is testifying for his confirmation hearing to cut the “acting” from his title – would inevitably face the same fate as just about every other one of Trump’s legal defenders. He’d be the next in a long line of disbarred, discredited, and disgraced attorneys who lost everything as a result of doing the Godking’s every bidding.

Well, this week, he got one step closer to the edge of that cliff when Judge Kathleen Williams issued a 56-page order tearing apart the IRS settlement his Justice Department brokered on Trump’s behalf. She referred Blanche for a disciplinary investigation for his trouble.

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A quick recap: Trump performed some impressive legal gymnastics to sue his own government – meaning himself – for $10 billion over the IRS leak of his tax returns. Then he oh-so-generously “settled,” opting instead for a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund along with permanent immunity from audits, prosecution, or enforcement for him, his sons, and his businesses, for any returns filed up to the settlement date. Todd Blanche was in charge of the Justice Department that set up the fund and the immunity. If that sounds like malpractice, it sure would be for someone tasked with upholding the law and the Constitution. But that’s not what Todd Blanche does. He has one client, and that’s Donald Trump. He was just doing his job.

Judge Williams ruled that the lawsuit was bogus, because it didn’t fulfill the basic requirement of actually being a lawsuit: having a distinct plaintiff and defendant.
“There was never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail,” she wrote in her ruling. Blanche tried to create a “heads I win, tails you lose” scenario for Trump, and the judge wasn’t buying it.

Now Blanche could face the same sort of consequences that took down so many of his predecessors. And he wouldn’t be alone in this one. The ruling threatens four lawyers. Alejandro Brito, Trump’s lead counsel, was referred to the Florida Bar for discipline. Stanley Woodward was referred to the D.C. Bar. Daniel Epstein is banned from appearing in the Southern District of Florida for one year. And Blanche himself was referred to the New York State Bar. Not an ideal headline on the eve of a big job interview to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

Every single one of Trump’s lawyers looks at the cold dead bodies of those who came before and seems to think it won’t happen to them. But defending Trump never works out well in the end. Todd Blanche is just the latest— but by no means special.

He’s done some fine work sucking up to Trump in order to get here: protecting him from the fallout from the Epstein files, setting up Trump’s January 6 slush fund, bringing politically motivated cases and investigations against Trump’s perceived enemies, and generally weaponizing the Justice Department to be Trump’s personal cudgel. But if I were him, I’d set up a plan B. Because if the past is any indication, Todd Blanche’s future is far from certain.