Todd Blanche was ordered to recuse from Trump cases — before becoming DOJ head: CNN report

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was urged by the top Justice Department ethics lawyer to recuse himself from any legal cases connected to his former client, President Donald Trump, according to a new CNN report on Thursday.

Just after Blanche took on the role of deputy attorney general in March 2025, Joseph Tirrell gave Blanche and Emil Bove, his then top-deputy, "a printed PowerPoint presentation on ethics," a former senior DOJ ethics official told CNN.

This was the first time that Blanche was formally told he would need to remove himself from Trump-related cases — something that has not been reported before.

"Around the same time, the department’s top career lawyer advised that Bove potentially had a conflict of interest by being involved in firings of DOJ lawyers," CNN reported.

CNN correspondent Katelyn Polantz, who worked on the exclusive report with senior justice correspondent Evan Perez and reporter Hannah Rabinowitz, said the question over Blanche and other former Trump lawyers' involvement at the DOJ had been on her mind.

"This question has been bugging me since the moment Donald Trump won the election," Polantz said. "It became possible that Todd Blanche and other former defense attorneys of Donald Trump would be running the show."

The new reporting confirmed what Blanche had been directed to do.

"Even if it was a case that Blanche himself hadn't worked on, if it related to Trump personally as a potential witness, having some sort of an interest there," Polantz said. "Personally, it would be something that Blanche could not work on at the department. Now he's the acting attorney general. He had signed the ethics pledge after this briefing, saying that he would recuse from cases like this. But this was the first time we really have pushed the question at the Justice Department, what's he doing about cases where Trump has a personal interest?"

Blanche has not responded to the report.

"So now what the Justice Department spokespeople are saying in response to this story, we asked, what about which cases, where is he recusing? If he is, they said that Blanche is recused from many cases before the Justice Department," Polantz said.

"In any cases that are still ongoing, where he previously represented someone, he is recused to the extent the Justice Department is investigating something related to the president, for which Todd Blanche was previously representing him. Then, hypothetically, yes, he would recuse. Is he out of this conspiracy investigation that Joe diGenova is leading? Is he out of any other so-called weaponization working group reports that would involve cases that had previously involved Trump?"