Blanche: DOJ independence is a 'misperception' — 'I work for President Trump

Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an October 21 interview on the New York Post's "Pod Force One" with Miranda Devine that there is a "misperception" of separation and independence between the Department of Justice and the White House. "I don't," he said, adding: "I work for President Trump."

Blanche made the comments while criticizing the Biden-era Justice Department under then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and its investigation and prosecution of January 6th rioters. The claim that the January 6th investigation was the largest in FBI history appears in the interview as a characterization by the host; the available sources do not independently verify it by case count or resources.

The remark was not Blanche's first on the subject. In an earlier NBC "Meet the Press" interview, he declined to pledge DOJ independence from the White House, saying: "No, I'm not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that."

Blanche, who previously represented Trump in criminal cases, was confirmed as attorney general by a 50-49 Senate vote in August 2026, after the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced his nomination 12-10.

After Watergate, the Justice Department put policies in place designed to wall the agency off from the White House. Those norms function as a check on using federal law enforcement against political opponents. A sitting attorney general publicly rejecting that framing affects how courts, donors, and the public weigh DOJ actions.

That context matters because federal courts and grand juries across the country and across the ideological spectrum have increasingly found they cannot credit the DOJ's representations, with judges citing false statements, pretextual justifications, and retaliatory prosecutions.

What the record shows is Blanche's public statements, not a documented change to department policy. Whether his framing reflects formal DOJ policy or only his personal view is not established by the available evidence, nor is how courts and grand juries will treat DOJ filings after this public statement, or whether Congress or the Senate Judiciary Committee will respond.