Attorney General Blanche refused to pledge DOJ independence from White House, said Trump's views can factor into prosecutions

On August 16, 2026, Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC News's "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker that he would not pledge the Justice Department would act independently of the White House. Asked directly, "Can you pledge that the Justice Department will always act independently of the White House?" Blanche answered: "No, I'm not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that." He said pledging independence would mean he would have to refuse a president's stated priorities, such as Trump's public call to prosecute violent criminals.

Welker also asked whether Trump should have a voice in individual prosecution decisions. Blanche responded, "Will I take the president of the United States's view on something into consideration? Yes, of course. And I hope every attorney general in history would not answer that question differently." He added: "The president of the United States, the elected president of the United States, says something to me. And I'm supposed to say to you, 'I would say nope.' I mean, that's not the way it works." Asked about the idea that the president directs him on individual prosecutions, Blanche called it "this extraordinarily false narrative that the president wakes up in the morning and calls me and says, 'Todd, go prosecute X or Y.' He does not do that. He has never done that. He will never do that."

Blanche, who served as Trump's personal criminal defense attorney before joining DOJ, was sworn in as attorney general the week before the interview following a narrow Senate confirmation. Post-Watergate norms have generally held that the Justice Department investigates and prosecutes independently of White House political direction; a ProPublica reporter interviewed by NPR called Blanche's comments "groundbreaking," representing "a shift in how the Justice Department has operated since Watergate." In the same interview, Blanche also defended U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's handling of a National Mall vandalism case that Trump had separately pressured her to revisit, and said he would take the president's views on that case into account.