Trump’s new pick to lead Justice heads to Senate for confirmation, after a tough Bondi tenure

President Donald Trump nominated acting Attorney General Todd Blanche this week to permanently fill the top vacancy at the Justice Department, a promotion of sorts for the acting AG.

Blanche assumed the role of acting attorney general after Pam Bondi was ousted from the AG position on April 2. Blanche previously served as Bondi’s deputy, confirmed by the Senate for that role last March. He will face another round of Senate vetting expected sometime later this summer.

Prior to his work at the DOJ, Blanche was Trump’s personal defense attorney and defended the president in a hush-money case in New York, which he lost, as well as federal lawsuits over mishandling classified documents upon leaving office and interfering with the 2020 election.

A fierce defender of the president, as acting attorney general, Blanche announced a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund last month as part of an unusual settlement between the president as a private citizen and the IRS. The fund set aside federal tax dollars to pay out claimants who allege being wronged by the federal government.

The fund immediately received bipartisan pushback and was seen as a publicly funded slush fund for the president and his supporters. Many worry, Republicans included, that Jan. 6 rioters could gain financial payouts from such claims. The DOJ, however, told the courts that the fund will not continue as the court system began to scrutinize the agreement, and was warned by Republican-appointed Judge Richard Leon not to trick the court.

At the HR’t of it. Separate from political slush funds, HR leaders are continuing to follow the activity at the Department of Justice and its interest in curbing diversity and equity programming.

Under Bondi, the office of the country’s top cop had pursued an aggressive approach to enforcing the president’s political views about DEI, launching time-consuming and expensive vanity investigations against businesses that pursue diversity and equity goals.

Before being fired by Trump after her handling of the Epstein files, in which the president was named thousands of times, and failing to win high-profile cases against Trump’s political enemies like James Comey and Letitia James, Bondi issued guidance redirecting the federal government’s priorities toward policing DEI programming at public and private institutions.

She’d pursued legal action against businesses such as PayPal and IBM over their DEI efforts. As part of settlement agreements with the DOJ, neither company admitted any wrongdoing.

“This Department of Justice is delivering on President Trump’s vow to root out illegal DEI from every corner of corporate America,” Blanche said in a statement about the PayPal settlement, reported by HR Brew.

Blanche appears primed to continue a dogged defense of the president, and this pursuit of his political priorities, including investigations directed at private sector DEI, if his remarks on Bondi’s initial efforts are any indication.