Standing in the Great Hall of the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Department building on August 13, newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche’s first DOJ speech assured the people who work for him that he would lead with integrity, uphold the law "without fear or favor," respect the courts, and protect the rights of every person in the country.
It was a good speech. Calm, humble in places, deliberately free of the red meat he usually serves up. Politico noted that the remarks stood out more for what Blanche left out than what he said: no attacks on Biden, no rants about "activist" judges, no promises to end "weaponization."
A stranger watching the video of the speech would think they were listening to an ordinary attorney general in an ordinary administration.
That's the problem. Almost every promise he made that afternoon is contradicted by something he personally did in the eighteen months before he made it.
Watch the speech, then read what follows.
"Integrity" and "Without Fear or Favor"
The attorney general's client is the United States. Not the president. That distinction is the job description of the U.S. AG. It always has been.
In February, Bloomberg Law reported that a top aide in Blanche's office told the leaders of all 93 U.S. Attorney's Offices that Donald Trump is their "chief client."
In April, Blanche told NBC News that Americans should be "happy" the president is deeply involved in DOJ business — and added that if Trump picked someone else for the job, he'd respond, "thank you very much. I love you, sir."
He has argued publicly that investigating people Trump "has had issues with" is not just the president's right but his duty.
Fear and favor have been the operating system. Blanche's office shut down a Clean Water Act investigation into coal companies owned by Republican Senator Jim Justice.
It closed a bribery probe into border czar Tom Homan.
It overruled his own Criminal Division to kill a years-long investigation into Abbott Laboratories over contaminated baby formula.
And in May he signed an addendum barring the IRS from auditing Trump's past tax returns, his family's, or his company's — a deal a federal judge later called collusive, referring Blanche to state bar authorities and describing his congressional testimony about it as "at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous."
"Different Backgrounds, Different Politics, Different Life Experiences"
Blanche said the department succeeds when people of different backgrounds, politics, and life experiences put the mission first. He said disagreement is how good decisions get made.
Five months earlier, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he bragged that the DOJ had fired more than 200 prosecutors and agents who touched cases involving Trump — "there is not a single man or woman at the Department of Justice who had anything to do with those prosecutions."
More than 20,000 employees have left the department under his leadership, including a quarter of its attorneys, according to Justice Connection, a group of DOJ alumni.
Career lawyers were removed for being on the wrong side of the wrong case.
Immigration judges were put on notice that DOJ would weed out anyone deciding cases too slowly or not "applying the law in the way it needs to be applied."
As for valuing different backgrounds: in May 2025, Blanche himself issued the memo directing the Justice Department to use the False Claims Act as a weapon against institutions that refused to abandon diversity programs.
He is the person who built the machine that punishes other employers for saying out loud what he said in the Great Hall.
"Always respect the role of the judiciary"
He also promised the department would not "engage in or stand for any sort of performative attacks that undermine the institutions that we are sworn to uphold."
In November 2025, Blanche stood at a Federalist Society event and asked young conservative lawyers to join a "war" against the federal judiciary.
In February 2026, his office asked the 93 U.S. Attorney's Offices to send in examples of judicial activism to build impeachment referrals.
He has twice fired attorneys chosen by federal judges to lead U.S. Attorney's Offices — in New York within hours of the appointment, and in Virginia days later.
And if performative prosecution had an example next to the term in dictionaries, it would be the indictment of James Comey for posting a photo of seashells arranged to read "86 47."
Blanche defended that case at a press conference. A judge threw out the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia as vindictive prosecution, citing Blanche's own public statements as evidence.
"Protect the Rights of Every Citizen in This Country"
This is the promise that should sting the most.
Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis in January. Blanche said within days that there was no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation.
Days after that, reporting revealed his office had directed prosecutors and the FBI to shut the civil rights inquiry down and instead investigate Good herself for possible assault — after she was already dead.
He did open a civil rights investigation into the death of Alex Pretti, but only after first refusing, and the team assigned to it excluded the career attorneys who specialize in excessive force.
The division that exists to protect civil rights has lost roughly 70 to 75 percent of its career attorneys since 2025, according to reporting compiled by Justice Connection and Public Citizen.
Voting rights and police accountability work was traded for culture war litigation.
Meanwhile Blanche has expanded denaturalization efforts, telling CBS he believes there are "a lot of individuals who are citizens who shouldn't be" — which is a strange thing to say roughly three months before promising to protect the rights of every citizen in the country.
The Speech Was the Point
Blanche closed by saying his goal is to leave the department more faithful to its highest ideals than when he found it.
He was confirmed 50-49, with two Republicans voting no over concerns about politicization — a Senate that had just watched the same record and did not believe him either.
Words are cheap and video is forever. The measure of an attorney general isn't the speech he gives in the Great Hall. It's whether Renee Good's family ever gets an investigation.
