Since his confirmation as attorney general on August 8, 2026 by a 50-49 Senate vote, Todd Blanche has become a regular presence on the Republican campaign trail. He praised the party's candidate for governor of New York at a rally-style event on Long Island in August. He spoke at the Republican Party's midterm convention in September. On September 16 he spoke at Trump's campaign rally for Senate candidate Michael Whatley in Gastonia, North Carolina (see Trump Calls North Carolina Cities 'Blood-Soaked Killing Fields' Hours After His Own White House and Attorney General Said Crime There Was Falling). The day before that he spoke from the White House podium, describing Democratic concerns about artificial intelligence as “nothing but an effort to influence the midterms.”
Blanche was Trump's personal defense lawyer before Trump made him the country's chief law enforcement officer.
The norm he is departing from is specific and traceable. As the New York Times reported, the principle that the Justice Department should appear apolitical “took root after Watergate,” when Richard Nixon's first attorney general, John Mitchell, resigned to run Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign and later went to prison for his role in the scandal. Mitchell's successor Edward Levi established what the Times called the modern norm of not acting as a political operative while in office.
The internal rule that enforced it is gone. Attorney General Merrick Garland's 2022 memorandum barring political appointees from partisan activity was rescinded by Pam Bondi in March 2026, leaving only the looser Hatch Act standard, which does not restrict the attorney general from all partisan activity. The department also fired its senior career ethics official, Joseph Tirrell, in July 2025, left the post open for nearly a year, and filled it with a former aide to JD Vance with no prior department experience, while moving authority to override ethics recommendations from a career official to political appointees.
Tirrell described what he would have advised: “In my former role, I would have advised the attorney general not to go to the White House and not to make comments about members of Congress within 45 days of an election... I'd say, 'That rally sounds like a Hatch Act violation to me, and I'd advise you not to do it.'”
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, asked about the convention speech, said, “It's unprecedented, and it's disgraceful. Attorneys general don't talk about political things. He shouldn't be there.” NYU legal ethics professor Stephen Gillers was blunter about the remedy: “Any attempt to discipline him will fail. That's unfortunate. He has the ability to do what he's doing, and he's chosen to do it.” Gillers added, “This is new. The changing image of what an attorney general should be seen to do, and how officials high in the Justice Department should behave, will not be good. We just don't know yet how bad it will be.”
The department's position is that the conduct is lawful. It called a Hatch Act complaint over the Long Island remarks “baseless” and “a politically motivated complaint designed to weaponize the Hatch Act against the attorney general for his support of law enforcement,” and said of the convention appearance that Blanche was there “in his personal capacity” and that the appearance “is legal (and has been approved by ethics).”
That is the shape of the story: not an adjudicated violation, but the removal of the internal rules that made the question moot, and a legal ethics scholar's judgment that nothing can now be done about it. It follows the same pattern as cabinet officers campaigning elsewhere in this administration (see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Headlined a Republican Primary Rally Against Rep. Thomas Massie, Breaking the Pentagon's Tradition of Political Neutrality).
Update (September 19, 2026): the Associated Press reported the same pattern independently, and added two things. The Hatch Act complaint over the Long Island remarks was filed by Public Citizen. And the department answered on the record through a spokesperson, rather than only through social media posts.
Update (October 12, 2026): a memo sent the week of October 5 by Assistant Attorney General Jolene Ann Laurie relaxes ethics restrictions so that Senate-confirmed appointees, including the attorney general, deputy attorney general, assistant attorneys general, the FBI director and U.S. attorneys, can speak at rallies, canvass for votes and serve as delegates or officers of a national political party, as long as they act “in their personal capacities,” CBS News reported. The 2024 guidance had told appointees to “avoid making public appearances in any state shortly before a primary or general election in that state, to the greatest extent practicable.” PBS News first reported the memo, which has not been published; the account here rests on CBS's reporting.