As Blanche faces bipartisan rebuke, GOP lawyers' group rustles up support
The Republican National Lawyers Association has been gathering signatures backing Blanche's nomination, All Rise News has learned.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has faced a groundswell of bipartisan opposition to his nomination in advance of his confirmation hearings next week.
On Tuesday, more than 1,200 former Justice Department officials — who served both Democratic and Republican administrations — signed a letter denouncing the “culture of fear” resulting from Blanche’s “purge of thousands of experienced career employees.” Trump’s former personal lawyer John Dowd and ex-White House attorney Ty Cobb signed that letter.
The week ended with an even larger show of force from 2,600 attorneys across the United States, who signed onto a blistering letter released on Friday condemning Blanche’s “conflicts” and “corruption” of the Justice Department.
But Blanche still has support in friendlier and more partisan waters.
‘First and foremost — lawyers’
All Rise News has learned that the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) has been soliciting signatures from current and former members for a letter praising Blanche’s “integrity and tenacity” — and urging the leaders of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary to “confirm him without unnecessary delay.”
A former RNLA member who has previously participated in the organization’s events forwarded the call to action and related materials to All Rise News, condemning the “gross” partisan display.
“Regardless of political affiliation, the Republican National Lawyers Association is supposed to be — first and foremost — lawyers,” said the former member, who declined to be identified. “You don’t give up your oath of attorney that everybody swears to their individual state bar associations just because you want to help get specific candidates elected.”
Citing “legitimate ethical objections” to Blanche’s nomination, the former member said: “It just feels like the latest example of partisan politics infecting institutions that previously were viewed as sacred.”
The RNLA, whose website boasts more than 7,000 members, has not yet publicly released the letter or announced how many signatures the group gathered before its deadline lapsed on Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time.
The group touted Blanche’s tenure as Donald Trump’s criminal defense attorney as an asset, rather than as a conflict.
“After departing from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Blanche practiced as a defense attorney at two nationally respected firms before opening Blanche Law to represent President Trump in a number of matters in 2023 and 2024,” the embargoed letter states. “Those representations unfolded amid extraordinary public scrutiny and intense legal and political pressure.”
All Rise News did not receive the letter directly from the organization and did not agree to an embargo. The RNLA’s call to action states that its “letter will be submitted at [Blanche’s] forthcoming hearing.”
‘Trump’s personal fixer with a federal badge’
Founded in 1985, the RNLA has counted Chief Justice John Roberts, former House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, and ex-White House Counsel Don McGahn among its former members. ProPublica reported that its third largest contributor for this year’s first quarter is the Dhillon Law Group, founded by Trump’s former election lawyer and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon.
Whereas the RNLA’s letter praised Blanche’s “America First law enforcement priorities,” the letter organized by the group Lawyers for Good Government identifies Blanche’s explicit adherence to Trump’s agenda as the problem distinguishing him from even his most partisan predecessors.
“While Attorneys General of both parties, including Jeff Sessions, William Barr, and Pamela Bondi, have affirmed before the Senate that the Department must operate free from political interference, Blanche has stated publicly that Americans should be ‘happy’ the president is ‘deeply involved’ in DOJ decisions, and dismissed White House independence from the DOJ as ‘the most false statement I have ever heard,’” the Lawyers for Good Government two-page letter states. “These positions are disqualifying.”
The more than 2,600 signatures from lawyers opposing Blanche’s confirmation stretch 126 additional pages.
Unlike the RNLA, Lawyers for Good Government regards Blanche’s representation of Trump in his criminal cases as a conflict and liability.
“No one in the history of the Justice Department has moved directly from representing a president in criminal proceedings to running the institution that prosecuted those cases,” the group’s founder and executive director Traci Feit Love said in a press release. “Todd Blanche isn’t America’s Attorney General. He is Donald Trump’s personal fixer with a federal badge. The Senate has a constitutional obligation to say no.”
According to Lawyers for Good Government’s press release, the signatories include “solo practitioners and partners at major firms, public defenders and former prosecutors, law school faculty and retired judges, civil rights lawyers and corporate counsel.”
The group intends to send a copy of the letter to every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee before Blanche’s confirmation hearing, which is scheduled to take place on July 15 and 16.
The RNLA’s president Michael Thielen didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
What a sorry state of affairs. Of course it parallels the designation of judges as "Trump" or "Biden" or "Obama", etc. The state of the judiciary is my greatest current source of hope and frustration. Thank you, Adam.