Todd Blanche assures Trump doesn’t want ‘yes men’ - but new AG refuse to pledge to act independently from White House

Donald Trump’s new attorney general made it clear Sunday: He will operate the Department of Justice in conjunction with the White House, affirming that America’s top law enforcement agency will function as an arm of the presidency.

Todd Blanche laid out his vision for the agency as he sat down for a his first interview as attorney general Sunday with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press . During the conversation he pledged not to be a “yes man”, but denied that the Justice Department was ever intended to act independently of the White House.

"Can you pledge that the Justice Department will act independently of the White House?" asked the NBC host. Blanche responded: “No, I am not going to pledge that — and no Attorney General should ever pledge that."

He was also asked directly if he would take Trump’s opinions into consideration on matters such as determining whether an abandoned prosecution should be revived, to which he said yes.

“Will I take the president of the United States' view on something into consideration? Yes. Of course. And I hope every attorney general in history would not answer that question differently,” said Blanche.

But he denied that the president would ever issue a direct order demanding that a certain person face prosecution, something that has already at least appeared to have occurred once in public view, as a direct message to Blanche’s predecessor Pam Bondi was accidentally published by the president as a post on his Truth Social account last year.

That message directed Bondi to begin prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey, among others.

"The president does not expect any of his leaders, including me, to just say yes to him no matter what he says,” Blanche claimed. “There's this extraordinarily false narrative that the president wakes up in the morning and calls me and says, 'Todd, go prosecute x or y.' He does not do that. He has never done that. He will never do that.”

The attorney general was confirmed to his position just before the Senate left for recess earlier this month. His confirmation process was fraught, with several Republican senators threatening to hold up the vote or even oppose his nomination if Blanche and the Justice Department could not guarantee, in writing, that an effort by the administration to establish a nearly $1.8 billion fund to reward persons supposedly targeted by “politicized” prosecutions was over.

Blanche had refused to put in writing that the “slush fund” was dead, but continued to insist it would not be used. The fund was created as part of Trump’s settlement with the IRS over a lawsuit.

Blanche eventually did so, but only after Trump threatened to pull his nomination and work through other means to see the fund established.