US President-elect Donald Trump is stacking his administration’s legal team with veteran lawyers who defended him in his multiple criminal cases, following his stunning pick of former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general.
Trump, the first former US president ever to be convicted of a crime, named Todd Blanche, his lawyer in his hush money trial in New York and two federal cases, to serve as deputy attorney general, the second highest-ranking job in the Justice Department.
Emil Bove, who also defended Trump in the hush money trial and the federal cases, was named principal associate deputy attorney general, the third-ranking job, and acting deputy attorney general while Blanche undergoes Senate confirmation.
D. John Sauer, who successfully argued Trump’s presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court, was named solicitor general, the lawyer in the Justice Department who represents the federal government in cases before the nation’s highest court.
Blanche, Bove and Sauer would serve under Gaetz provided the scandal-plagued ex-lawmaker can receive confirmation in the Senate, where some members of Trump’s own Republican Party have expressed concerns about the choice.
Blanche, a graduate of Brooklyn Law School, and Bove, who earned his law degree from Georgetown University, defended Trump in the New York case that ended in his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star.
Trump was scheduled to be sentenced in July, but his lawyers asked that his conviction be tossed in light of the Supreme Court ruling that an ex-president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
Judge Juan Merchan is to rule on the dismissal motion on November 19 and has set sentencing — should it still be necessary — for November 26.
– ‘Broken System of Justice’ –
Blanche and Bove, both former federal prosecutors in New York, represented Trump in the two federal cases brought against the former president by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Trump was charged in Washington with conspiracy to defraud the United States over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
He was charged in Florida with mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.
The documents case was dismissed by a Trump-appointed judge while the election interference case was delayed by Trump’s claims of presidential immunity and never came to trial.
Smith is currently winding down both federal cases in light of a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Sauer, Trump’s pick to be solicitor general, earned his law degree from Harvard and attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. A former federal prosecutor, he served as solicitor general of the midwestern state of Missouri from 2017 to 2023.
Announcing Sauer’s nomination on Truth Social, Trump praised him for his “Historic Victory on Presidential Immunity, which was key to defeating the unConstitutional campaign of Lawfare against me and the entire MAGA Movement.”
“(Blanche) will be a crucial leader in the Justice Department, fixing what has been a broken System of Justice for far too long,” Trump said, while Bove “will be a crucial part of the Justice Department, rooting out corruption and crime.”
Trump has called for retribution against his political foes, and his Justice Department nominees were condemned by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“These selections show Donald Trump intends to weaponize the Justice Department to seek vengeance,” Durbin said.
“Donald Trump viewed the Justice Department as his personal law firm during his first term, and these selections — his personal attorneys — are poised to do his bidding.”
Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy attorney general during Trump’s first term in the White House, suggested the fears were overblown.
In a post on X, Rosenstein welcomed the nominations of Blanche and Bove while notably failing to mention Gaetz.
“Critics of unfit appointees should applaud when the president picks qualified people with integrity,” he said. “As Deputy AG, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove won’t allow partisanship to sway DOJ prosecutions. The rule of law prevails.”
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