President-elect Trump announced Thursday that he will nominate three of his criminal defense attorneys to top positions at the Justice Department.
President Trump announced in a statement that Todd Blanche will become deputy attorney general and Emile Bove will become principal deputy attorney general.
They served as Trump's trial lawyers in the hush-money case in New York that led to the former president's first criminal conviction this spring, and in two federal criminal prosecutions against him brought by special counsel Jack Smith. There is.
President Trump also announced Thursday that he will nominate D. John Sauer, an appellate lawyer who argued Trump's presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court earlier this year, as attorney general.
The position is the fourth-highest position in the Justice Department and determines which cases the government appeals, including representing the administration in the nation's highest court.
The three lawyers will likely work for former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), who was announced the day before by President Trump as his nominee for attorney general, sending a political shockwave through Washington.
Unlike Gaetz, both Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove previously worked as prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
President Trump emphasized their experience in his announcement and did not mention their work as defense attorneys.
President Trump said of Branch: “Todd is an outstanding lawyer who will be an important leader at the Department of Justice and fix a justice system that has been broken for far too long.”
The president-elect similarly wrote of Bove: “Emile is a tough, strong lawyer who will be an important part of the Department of Justice's efforts to root out corruption and crime.”
Both went into private practice and eventually joined President Trump's criminal defense team last year.
Blanche first began representing the former president in April 2023 when he was indicted in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records. To do so, Blanche is forced to leave her partnership at a prominent law firm and instead establish her own law firm.
Bove plans to move on to Blanche later this year as Smith moves to prosecute Trump in Washington, D.C., on charges of conspiring to destroy the 2020 election results and in Florida on charges of mishandling classified documents. I started working at a new company.
Sauer, President Trump's attorney general nominee, served as Missouri's attorney general for six years. He worked for Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Eric Schmidt (R-Missouri) when they were state attorneys general.
Sauer also clerked for the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
In his accusations against Sauer, Trump highlighted the lawyer's work in his criminal defense. “Most recently, John was the lead attorney representing me before the Supreme Court in Trump v. United States and won a historic victory on presidential immunity, which was key to its defeat.” To me and the entire MAGA movement. This is a campaign against the law,” Trump wrote.
Mr. Sauer also represented Mr. Trump in his appeal of a jury verdict in a civil case that found the former president liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s.
Updated at 6:58 p.m.
