The Senate on Wednesday confirmed President Trump’s criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche to take the No. 2 position at the Justice Department, where he has vowed to end the kind of investigations and prosecutions that led to indictments against his client.
Mr. Blanche’s nomination to be the deputy attorney general, with oversight of the F.B.I.; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and other federal law enforcement agencies, passed 52 to 46 in a mostly party-line vote.
A former federal prosecutor in New York, Mr. Blanche was in private practice as a defense lawyer when he agreed to take on Mr. Trump as a client, assembling and managing a legal team to defend him against four separate indictments.
He was Mr. Trump’s attorney in his New York State trial last year on charges of falsifying business records. Mr. Trump was convicted of all 34 counts, but he and his lawyers, including Mr. Blanche, have denounced the case as a misuse of prosecutorial power.
Mr. Blanche carried that argument, and his anger, into his confirmation hearing last month. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was still “frustrated” by what he called the unfair treatment of his client by judges and prosecutors. “That’s power, and that’s power that’s corrupted,” he said.
Mr. Blanche is the most prominent of several lawyers who have represented Mr. Trump in private practice who are now poised to take senior positions within the Justice Department. Democrats have raised concerns that their elevation to those roles will create inherent ethical conflicts, but Mr. Blanche and the other Trump lawyers have downplayed such concerns.
At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Blanche confirmed that his “attorney-client relationship with President Trump remains,” but added that he “will not violate my ethical obligations.”
He also discounted any suggestion that he might be put in a difficult position by the president, who had a contentious relationship with Justice Department leaders during his first term.
“I don’t think President Trump is going to ask me to do anything illegal or immoral,” Mr. Blanche said. “I say that with experience and firsthand knowledge.”
