Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche played a key role overseeing Donald Trump’s so-called retribution campaign to target the president’s political enemies and investigate the prosecutors and officials who once investigated them, new emails show.
Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney and his nominee to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement official, assigned senior Department of Justice officials to oversee politically loaded investigations into former special counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecution of January 6 rioters and the 2020 presidential election, emails show.
The documents, obtained by watchdog group American Oversight and first reported by The New York Times, were released the day before Blanche faces two days of Senate confirmation hearings to serve as the next U.S. Attorney General.
Emails and other documents appear to show Blanche’s grip on the Justice Department’s inner workings, from scheduling weekly “weaponization” meetings in his office to berating senior officials he didn’t think were up to the job.
Other messages show Blanche’s office deploying his allies to oversee high-profile investigations following demands from the president and his allies to prosecute his rivals.
In one email from May 2025, Blanche ripped into Ed Martin, a right-wing activist and attorney who supported January 6 defendants.
Weeks after Martin was appointed to lead a “Weaponization Working Group,” Blanche reprimanded Martin for speaking with reporters and using the wrong title in his statements to the press.
“This is becoming a real problem, Ed. We need to talk about what is going on here?” Blanche wrote at the time. “I am frustrated.”
In response to the message, which was sent to several Justice Department officials, Martin’s senior advisor Neil McCabe said “I acknowledge your concerns and rules of the road.”
Other messages outline the officials leading investigations into the “weaponization” group’s targets alongside Blanche’s deputies, including Emil Bove, who was among the attorneys alongside Blanche defending Trump in his criminal cases before he was tapped for a job at the Justice Department. Trump later nominated Bove to serve as a federal appeals court judge.
Christopher-James DeLorenz was tasked with investigating Jack Smith, the former special counsel who prosecuted the president for an alleged conspiracy to overturn election results and his alleged efforts to illegally retain classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
DeLorenz is a former law clerk for Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over and ultimately dismissed the classified documents cases.
Kendra Wharton, another Blanche ally who previously worked on the president’s criminal defense team, was assigned to investigate allegations that federal prosecutors during Joe Biden’s administration worked with prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Wharton later recused herself from the investigation and left the Justice Department in July 2025.
Jared Wise, a former FBI agent who joined riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was tapped to lead an investigation into the alleged “targeting of whistleblowers.”
Wise was scheduled to go to trial for his actions surrounding the January 6 attack 10 days before Trump returned to the White House and issued sweeping pardons for virtually every person charged in connection with the assault.
Court records show that he admitted to urging rioters to “kill” law enforcement and faced six counts in connection with the riots. He berated police as “Nazis” and “Gestapo” and testified that he would be “morally justified” if he had assaulted them in defense of what he viewed as excessive force, filings show.
Last year, the Justice Department called him a “valued member” of the agency.”
He resigned earlier this year, writing on social media that he would “expose the abuses by the FBI and DOJ against January 6 defendants” from outside the government.
Martin, meanwhile, was handed control over two investigations: the prosecution of January 6 rioters and Biden’s use of an “autopen” to sign documents. Trump had demanded an investigation of his predecessor’s administration after claiming that the former president’s aides used “autopen” signatures to hide Biden’s “cognitive decline.”
The Justice Department has effectively wiped the convictions for the hundreds of people charged in connection with January 6, though investigators appear to have shelved the “autopen” probe.
“The American people deserve to know how Todd Blanche has used the extraordinary powers of the Justice Department to further the president’s ‘weaponization’ agenda. These records provide troubling insight,” American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu, said in a statement.
“Todd Blanche oversaw senior Justice Department officials pursuing politically charged investigations, convened recurring meetings of the so-called Weaponization Working Group, and committed departmental resources to advancing President Trump’s efforts targeting political opponents, election administration, and other high-profile vendettas,” Chukwu added.
“Senators should judge him not by his assurances at a confirmation hearing, but by the record he has already built — one that raises serious doubts about his ability to lead an independent Justice Department rather than use it to advance a dangerously partisan agenda.”
Blanche is among several former personal attorneys to the president who were rewarded with key roles in the administration after spending years defending the president through a minefield of legal challenges.
Blanche and Bove mounted Trump’s defense through his three criminal prosecutions, including during a weeks-long hush money trial in Manhattan that led to the first ever conviction of a president. Blanche was sworn into office as the Justice Department’s No. 2 official just weeks after appearing alongside Trump for his criminal sentencing.
Trump tapped Blanche for Attorney General after the president fired Pam Bondi earlier this year.
After his appointment as Acting Attorney General, Blanche signed off on a controversial Justice Department rule that blocks tax investigations into the president, his family and their companies.
He also helped launch what critics have called a “slush fund” for the president’s allies, which Blanche has testified is “not moving forward” after it was swatted down in court.
Blanche, who is already facing several ethics complaints in New York over alleged misconduct in office, was also reprimanded by a federal judge on Monday after he brokered a so-called “settlement” agreement that bails the president out of IRS investigations.
