Grand Theft America / Receipt power-2026-08-16-102

Blanche refuses to pledge DOJ independence and says he will weigh Trump's view on prosecutions

Attorney General Todd Blanche declined to commit to always acting independently of the White House and said he would take the president's view into consideration in prosecution decisions.

The Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C.
Documentary photograph. The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in Washington, D.C. Documentary photograph.Tony Webster · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons ↗
Verified through 2026-08-26Source: cnn.comCorrections: none logged

What happened

Asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether he would always act independently of the White House, Blanche said he would not pledge that and that no attorney general should. Pressed on whether the president should have a say in prosecutions, in light of Trump's call to revisit a Reflecting Pool vandalism case the US Attorney for the District of Columbia had dismissed, Blanche said he would take the president's view into consideration. Blanche, Trump's former personal defence attorney, was confirmed by the Senate the previous weekend after serving in an acting capacity since April. He declined to say whether the DC US Attorney should revisit the dismissed case.

Why it matters

An attorney general who says he will weigh the president's view on individual prosecutions makes the operative question in a charging decision what the White House wants rather than what the record carries. That is the mechanism this sub-indicator follows, and here the sitting officeholder describes it as the normal practice of the office rather than as an exception.

Receipt details

  • Phase 2
  • Turn law enforcement inward
  • Lean on the prosecutors' charging decisions

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