Todd Blanche

Blanche has indicted 10 foreign nationals for illegal voting in Minnesota's 2022 and 2024 elections and its August 2026 primary, bringing noncitizens charged with election crimes under the administration to 90 since last year; a Utah postal worker faces a separate indictment for dumping 300 primary ballots, a case Blanche and Acting Deputy AG Trent McCotter cast as a threat to electoral integrity. The drive runs jointly with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin's agency, which is investigating over 1,600 voter fraud cases with 300,000 pending, though the alleged illegal votes tallied in Minnesota are a vanishingly small share of the total vote. After the Supreme Court blocked mail-ballot screening, Blanche says DOJ will comply while the work continues, including suits against 30 states over voter-roll data and preservation orders covering 29 states plus D.C., and he blames states he believes "probably even knew about it, chose not to look into it."

Blanche filed a judicial misconduct complaint against seven Minnesota federal judges, including Judges Patrick Schiltz and John Tunheim, over their New York Times interviews about Operation Metro Surge, and is seeking their recusal from all DHS cases. He says their conduct "has undermined public confidence in an impartial judiciary in Minnesota" and that DOJ had "no choice but to act to defend not only our prosecutors, but also DHS." Schiltz has publicly defended his remarks as protected advocacy for the rule of law and previously ruled that ICE violated nearly 100 court orders.

Chief Judge Stanley Bastian ordered court-appointed U.S. Attorney Roger Rogoff immediately reinstated after Trump fired him by email and personally enjoined Blanche from taking further actions to terminate him; DOJ contends the firing fell within executive power and will appeal, and Trump has nominated Pete Serrano to the post. A federal appeals court has paused the third-country deportation program for denying migrants a meaningful chance to challenge removal, and the administration plans a Supreme Court appeal, with Blanche defending the program as a legal tool to stem illegal immigration. DOJ also declined to appeal a ruling striking down suppressor and short-barreled-rifle registration requirements, leaving a two-tier system and an Oct. 12 deadline to tell nine states whether the injunction covers all their residents, as GOP lawmakers press Blanche to extend the ruling nationwide by rulemaking.

Blanche faces an October 5 deadline to answer Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal on whether political influence, possibly from Donald Trump Jr. or Trump personal lawyer Boris Epshteyn, drove DOJ's August dismissal of the bribery case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, which a New York federal judge called "highly unusual." Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie have hit 218 signatures on a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill letting Epstein files victims and state prosecutors sue the attorney general over unlawful redaction or withholding, though Speaker Mike Johnson delayed the vote by sending the House into a six-week recess; Blanche still faces potential contempt proceedings. He answers a Public Citizen Hatch Act complaint over partisan GOP appearances by saying "I will always say yes to speak when the president of the United States asks me to," and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Bobby Scott and Rep. Jamie Raskin have formally demanded that he and FBI Director Kash Patel probe thousands of apparently fake public comments, including names of deceased individuals, backing the administration's 401(k) alternative-investment rule.

Trump has tasked Blanche with reviewing the inspector general report on roughly $1 billion in Federal Reserve headquarters renovation overruns, part of the president's effort to build a for-cause case against Chair Jerome Powell and two other Fed governors. Blanche says the Florida-based probe into whether Trump was targeted by a criminal conspiracy, covering the 2017 Russian-interference findings and Jack Smith's classified-documents and 2020-election investigations, will continue after prosecutor Joseph DiGenova resigned: "we're not going to slow down just because somebody leaves." FHFA Director Bill Pulte reportedly examined Blanche's own mortgage records last year amid a fight over investigations of Trump rivals, and officials suggest the review was used to press DOJ to accelerate probes of Sen. Adam Schiff, New York AG Letitia James and Fed governor Lisa Cook; Pulte's lawyer denies Blanche's files were reviewed.