Trump says he will nominate Todd Blanche as attorney general

The latest: The president revealed the pick in a video that deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino posted to X late Wednesday.

• "We are going to make him permanent attorney general," Trump said in the video, vowing to start the process the next day.
• The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The intrigue: Trump is elevating Blanche days after his most public setback.

• The acting AG spent weeks defending a nearly $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, a taxpayer payout to people who say they were wrongly targeted by the government. It was born of the DOJ's settlement of Trump's own lawsuit against the IRS.
• After Senate Republicans balked, especially at the prospect of payouts to Jan. 6 rioters, he killed the fund Tuesday.
• Still, Blanche said the department will keep the settlement's provisions prohibiting the IRS from auditing Trump's past returns.
• Trump has demurred, continuing to call the fund a "beautiful thing" to CNN and saying he doesn't know if it's dead.

Catch up quick: Blanche was Trump's criminal defense attorney, who steered him through his 2024 hush money conviction and the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith that never reached trial.

• He's run the DOJ on an acting basis since Trump pushed out Pam Bondi in April, frustrated she hadn't delivered prosecutions of his enemies, Axios previously reported.
• As deputy attorney general, Blanche had publicly declared a "war" on judges and state bar associations.

What's next: Blanche cleared the Senate as deputy AG last year 52-46, on a party line vote.

• That was before the revolt over the fund, and before Trump spent the primary season ending the careers of Republicans he deemed insufficiently loyal.