So much for fighting corruption: Todd Blanche is a step closer to confirmation

Opinion>Opinions - White House The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill So much for fighting corruption: Todd Blanche is a step closer to confirmation Comments: by Svante Myrick, opinion contributor - 08/03/26 10:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Svante Myrick, opinion contributor - 08/03/26 10:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied Title: Congress Blanche Image ID: 26211556192292 Article: FILE - Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is sworn in as he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

Title: Congress Blanche Image ID: 26211556192292 Article: FILE - Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is sworn in as he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

FILE – Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is sworn in as he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

The battle over Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general has affirmed the undeniable reality that corruption is the rotten core of the Trump administration.

Trump last week was willing to sacrifice Blanche’s confirmation rather than back down on the wildly corrupt slush fund and immunity deal that Blanche approved as if he were still Trump’s personal lawyer and not the acting attorney general of the United States. Efforts by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) to fix these deals were trashed by Trump.

Now, it appears, Tillis and Cornyn are satisfied with Blanche rescinding the order creating what Tillis termed the “payout pot for punks” and clarify that the IRS immunity deal applies retroactively “just” to Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization.

To be clear: none of this erases the rot revealed by the deals that Blanche engineered and approved. Blanche has abused his power to mock the rule of law, enrich his most important client and betray American taxpayers in the process.

Remember, this all started with an extortion demand from the sitting president against the people he is supposed to serve. In January, Trump and family members filed a lawsuit demanding $10 billion from the taxpayers because a contractor working for the IRS had leaked some of their tax returns.

Remember, too, that this administration is loudly committed to the idea that there is no such thing as an independent Justice Department. They insist that every executive branch employee, including the acting attorney general, is there to carry out the president’s demands.

Blanche buys into that ideology. So there were never two sides to the lawsuit, only lawyers working for Trump inside and outside the government. There was never any question that the Justice Department would give Trump whatever he wanted.

What Trump got, just months after his bogus lawsuit was filed, was Blanche approving the creation of a massive taxpayer-funded slush fund that Trump could dole out to his allies — possibly even those who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol Police. He also got an appalling immunity deal that would effectively make Trump, his family members and their business empire legally untouchable for any wrongdoing they had committed up to that date.

Blanche could never have gotten a deal like that for Trump when he was outside the government. And Trump would never have demanded a deal like that if he weren’t so reprehensibly committed to using the presidency for self-enrichment. The whole thing was a flagrant abuse of the legal system to benefit Trump personally and financially.

In July, a federal judge ruled that the Trump lawsuit was filed “for an improper purpose,” which was to create the false appearance of “judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.” The judge noted that the immunity deal “directly contravenes” a federal law against the executive branch influencing taxpayer audits and investigations.

That is the corrupt deal that Blanche defended before the Senate. And it’s the corrupt deal that the president has desperately sought to protect, even when it put Blanche’s confirmation at risk.

The public spotlight over Blanche’s confirmation has understandably focused on the slush fund and immunity deal in recent days, because that has been a major concern of key Republican senators. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that there are many other reasons Blanche is utterly unfit to serve as our country’s top law enforcement officer: He has turned the Justice Department into a weapon illegitimately deployed against Trump’s personal and political enemies.

He is also what writer William Kristol has called “the prime orchestrator and key executor of the Trump administration’s Jeffrey Epstein coverup.” He cynically agreed to a meeting with Epstein abuse survivors in a last-ditch effort to save his nomination, then treated the survivors with condescension, telling them in their face-to-face meeting to “get to the point.”

He has defended Trump’s corruption of the pardon process and presided over a Justice Department that’s losing talented attorneys and the trust of federal judges. His Justice Department has been repeatedly slammed by federal judges — sometimes he himself has been singled out by name — for prosecutorial misconduct, including misleading judges and violating court orders about the administration’s brutal mass deportation operations.

As the Not Above the Law Coalition pointed out, his record at the Department of Justice has been “16 months of corruption, retaliation, and abuse of power.”

In short, Blanche is everything an attorney general should not be. No senator should dishonor their office or betray their oath by voting to confirm him as attorney general — now or at any time in the future.

Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way.