Trump picks his lawyer, Todd Blanche, as deputy attorney general : NPR

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated former federal prosecutor Todd Blanche as his deputy attorney general. Blanche represented Trump in several of his legal cases.

He previously worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

“Todd is an excellent attorney who will be a crucial leader in the Justice Department, fixing what has been a broken System of Justice for far too long,” Trump said in a statement.

If confirmed, Blanche would be the No. 2 official below the attorney general. Trump on Wednesday nominated former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

Trump also said Emil Bove, another lawyer who defended Trump in his legal cases, will serve as principal associate deputy attorney general, the Justice Department’s No. 3 official, and will be the acting deputy attorney general while Blanche is being confirmed by the Senate.

Donald Trump’s defense attorney, Emil Bove, returns to the courtroom after a break at Manhattan criminal court on April 16.

Mary Altaffer/AP

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Mary Altaffer/AP

The Department of Justice has been key to Trump’s agenda for his second term in office as he potentially seeks to make the department more accountable to the president and go after his perceived enemies.

Both Bove and Blanche were Trump’s attorneys in his landmark federal conviction in the New York hush money case, where a jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts. Trump has not been sentenced in that case while the judge weighs arguments about his immunity from prosecution.

And Trump also named Dean John Sauer as his solicitor general, a position widely regarded as the government’s lawyer. Sauer represented Trump at the Supreme Court in a case in which the 6-3 conservative supermajority gave him broad immunity from prosecution.

The picks continue the trend of Trump nominating people whom he worked with closely and have shown themselves loyal to him.