Attorney General Todd Blanche forced out the Justice Department’s top national security official after the two clashed over the pace of White House-directed media leak investigations, according to senior administration officials.
Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division John Eisenberg was ordered to resign following a rocky tenure in which Eisenberg quickly fell out of favor with the DOJ leadership team, added the officials. He’s one of three Senate-confirmed DOJ leaders to depart this week after Democrats swept the midterms.
Eisenberg frustrated Blanche by trying to put the brakes on President Donald Trump’s demands to compel grand jury testimony from reporters about their sources in stories that were critical of the president, said the officials, who spoke anonymously about internal deliberations.
Blanche and his team pressured Eisenberg to approve the highly unusual and aggressive tack of subpoenaing reporters to divulge sources providing sensitive information — including the New York Times reporters who wrote about security problems with the president’s Qatari-donated jet.
In a range of investigations into leaks of government secrets, Eisenberg sought to ensure his division was following DOJ protocols that require other fact-gathering steps to determine the sources’ identities before targeting reporters, the officials said.
Blanche and his aides felt Eisenberg, a Yale Law graduate who’s viewed as a DOJ institutionalist, wasn’t considering other workarounds that could’ve expedited the cases, one of the officials said.
Media freedom advocates have criticized the department’s efforts in Trump’s second term to seek grand jury testimony and phone records of reporters.
The department wound up withdrawing the subpoenas of New York Times journalists in July following a hearing in which a federal judge rebuked the approach. But other foreign relations coverage, including about Venezuela, that’s drawn the White House’s ire also prompted Blanche to press Eisenberg to take bolder media leaks steps, the officials said.
Another person familiar with the Blanche-Eisenberg dyamic said the progress on leaks cases was one of numerous frustrations the attorney general had with his national security chief. A larger concern was Eisenberg’s lack of prior experience managing a large team, the person said.
Eisenberg, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and longtime national security professional, also disappointed Blanche in other instances and was never viewed as a Trump loyalist like other DOJ political leaders, the senior officials added. He’d served as a White House deputy counsel in Trump’s first administration and was later a partner at Kirkland & Ellis.
DOJ media representatives and Eisenberg didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In announcing Eisenberg’s resignation Friday as head of DOJ’s National Security Division, Blanche praised him on X for “strengthening our nation’s ability to address threats, both foreign and domestic.”
Bove Influence
Blanche and his former top deputy Emil Bove entered the administration with a disdain for NSD’s approach in counterintelligence and counterterrorism matters and quickly lost trust in Eisenberg, the officials said.
Now a federal appellate judge, Bove took to nicknaming him “Eisenblock” behind his back, several officials said. Blanche briefly thought that was his actual surname before continuing using the moniker, they added.
Eisenberg further upset department leaders last year by investing resources in continuing the division’s tradition of indicting foreign defendants such as hackers despite long odds that the US would ever be able to bring them to trial.
Both Blanche and Bove were previously Trump’s defense attorneys opposite NSD lawyers in the criminal prosecution of the president’s handling of classified materials.
Eisenberg had overseen NSD since mid-2025 during a period in which it lost considerable clout compared to previous administrations and suffered from significant attrition of veteran supervisors and lawyers.
DOJ acknowledged in an April budget document that the division faced “unprecedented” workforce constraints.
Many NSD attorneys have departed, partially over frustration that they were forced to spend their days reviewing Jeffrey Epstein documents last year, according to interviews with former division employees. Those NSD veterans said they admired Eisenberg’s intellect, even though some questioned his leadership skills.