President Trump has indicated that he plans to nominate Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who once served as his defense lawyer, to lead the Justice Department on a permanent basis, elevating a trusted loyalist who has proved willing to execute the president’s demands.
Dan Scavino, one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers, posted a video of the president announcing the plan on Wednesday night at a closed event in the White House Rose Garden.
“Tomorrow I’m instructing Dan and everybody else that’s involved in that very complicated process, which is going to go, I think, very quickly, that we are going to make him permanent attorney general,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Blanche in the video.
Mr. Trump had not made a public announcement as of early Thursday evening, but Mr. Blanche said he “could not be happier” about the news.
“Anytime President Trump nominates you, it’s an honor, the honor of a lifetime,” he said in an interview with NewsNation on Thursday.
If Mr. Trump follows through and formally nominates Mr. Blanche to the post, it would likely set off a bruising confirmation battle in the Senate, where Mr. Blanche has faced withering questions on topics including his actions in the Jeffrey Epstein case and his greenlighting of prosecutions of people Mr. Trump has targeted for retribution.
Mr. Blanche has also faced fierce backlash over the president’s plan to create a $1.8 billion fund to use taxpayer money to pay his allies who claim they have been politically persecuted.
But Mr. Blanche expressed hope that he could win over senators. “The confirmation process, we’ll work with the Senate,” Mr. Blanche said. “I have every optimism.”
Also this week, Mr. Trump named Bill Pulte, who has pressed for investigations into the president’s foes, to serve as the acting director of national intelligence, giving him oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Mr. Pulte, who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has no known background in intelligence, defense or national security. He has been among the most aggressive advocates for prosecuting Democrats and others perceived by Mr. Trump as having crossed him.
His appointment led Democrats to threaten to hold up reauthorization of a surveillance program used to guard against national security threats.