WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Todd Blanche, a lawyer who led the legal team that defended the Republican against him. criminal trial for silent moneyto serve as the second-highest official of the Department of Justice.

A former federal prosecutor, Blanche was a key figure on Trump’s defense team in both the New York case that ended in a conviction in May and the federal cases brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.

“Todd is an excellent lawyer who will be a crucial leader in the Department of Justice, fixing what has been a broken justice system for far too long,” Trump said in a statement Thursday announcing his pick.

If confirmed as deputy attorney general by the Republican-led Senate, Blanche would manage the day-to-day operations of the sprawling Justice Department, which Trump has promised to overhaul.

The announcement comes a day after the president-elect said he had chosen Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump loyalist who once faced a sex-trafficking investigation by the Department of Justice which ended without charges.

Trump is appointing two more members of his defense team to senior positions in the Justice Department.

Emil Bove, a former federal prosecutor, will be the principal deputy attorney general and serve as acting deputy attorney general until Blanche is confirmed, Trump said.

Trump appointed D. John Sauer, who successfully argued his presidential immunity case before the US Supreme Court, to be the solicitor general, representing his administration before the high court. Sauer, who previously served as Missouri’s solicitor general, was a Rhodes Scholar and served as a Supreme Court clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Blanche represented Trump in both the 2020 election interference case in Washington and the Florida case accusing the former president of hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. In both cases, the defense team successfully mounted a legal strategy largely focused on delaying the cases until after the election.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon last summer dismissed the classified documents filing, finding that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith was illegal. The 2020 election case was stalled amid arguments over Trump requests for immunity from prosecution which reached the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department is now evaluating how to relax the two prosecutions to comply with the department’s longstanding policy that sitting presidents cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office.

Blanche also represented Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafortand managed to get a mortgage fraud case against him dismissed in the same New York court where Trump was convicted. Blanche argued that that case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, was too similar to the one that landed Manafort in federal prison and therefore constituted double jeopardy.

Blanche joined Trump’s defense team just before his April 2023 impeachment in the New York case. Trump was indicted in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election a quiet cash payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex. Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, although his lawyers are urging the judge to overturn the guilty verdict.

Blanche left Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, where she was a partner in the White Collar Defense and Investigations firm, to form her own practice. Blanche told colleagues at Cadwalader that she resigned to represent Trump. He joined the company in September 2017.

In an email announcing his departure, he wrote: “I was asked to represent Trump in the recent DA case and after much thought/consideration I decided it was the best thing I I can also make an opportunity that I shouldn’t. step up.”

A native of suburban Denver, Blanche graduated from American University in Washington, DC and Brooklyn Law School.

Blanche first joined the Department of Justice as a paralegal in the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York while in law school.

He later clerked for federal judges and then a prosecutor in the same U.S. attorney’s office, covering Manhattan, the Bronx and the northern suburbs, for about eight years and spent two years as co-chief of the office’s violent crimes unit.

Bove, a star college lacrosse player, joined Blanche’s law firm last year and has handled many key arguments in Trump’s legal cases, including pending efforts to overturn the hush money conviction in light of his election victory . As a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove was involved in several high-profile prosecutions, including a drug-trafficking case against the brother of the former president of Honduras, a man who set off a pot under pressure in Manhattan and of a man who sent dozens of mail bombs to prominent targets across the country.

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Sisak reported from New York.