Watchdog Group Urges Blanche To Step Aside As Trump’s Records Gatekeeper

Before Donald Trump made him second in command at the Justice Department, Todd Blanche was the president’s most prominent defense attorney, shielding him from an avalanche of criminal cases that threatened to land him in jail for years.

That loyalty led Trump to appoint Blanche as his designated representative to the National Archives, the keeper of White House records from the president’s first term. Large swathes of those first-term records are slated to become publicly available next week, and under the Presidential Records Act, the president’s designees play an outsized role in governing the public’s access to those files.

American Oversight, a prominent left-leaning government transparency group, is urging Blanche to relinquish his role as the gatekeeper to Trump’s presidential records, saying his attorney-client relationship with the president — in addition to his role as deputy attorney general — presents a conflict. Anything less, the group argues, will erode public confidence in the process.

“Withdrawal from your role as one of President Trump's [National Archives] designees is not merely appropriate but necessary to protect the integrity of the PRA's disclosure process,” Ron Fein, the chief counsel of American Oversight, wrote in a letter to Blanche delivered Friday.

Justice Department and National Archives spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment or to clarify whether Blanche remains one of the president’s designees.

Trump installed Blanche and attorney Evan Corcoran as his representatives to the National Archives in Sept. 2023, just months after he was indicted in four criminal cases. That designation rescinded the designation of seven former White House and Justice Department advisers from Trump’s first term, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Justice Department official Steven Engel. Trump also briefly expanded the list in 2022 to include conservative journalist John Solomon and future FBI Director Kash Patel before revoking those designations with the appointment of Blanche.

American Oversight has been preparing to pepper the administration with requests to access records from some of the central controversies of Trump’s first term, including his effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political adversaries — which led to Trump’s first impeachment. Those records could also include details of the first Trump administration’s handling of the sex trafficking conspiracy case against Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s decisions surrounding classified documents at the end of his first term, which led to the criminal charges that Blanched defended him against.

Trump’s designees to the National Archives became directly involved in another of Trump’s criminal cases: special counsel Jack Smith’s charges against him for seeking to subvert the 2020 election. When Smith obtained a search warrant to get Trump’s account details from X, the Elon Musk-owned company resisted and suggested informing Trump’s National Archives representatives about the demand.

A judge rejected the company’s suggestion, however, and ordered X to turn over its records.