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The Blanche Record
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the Self-Dealing & Crony Capitalism hub.
The Blanche Record
Three sitting federal judges. 136 former judges. One Deputy Attorney General. Five months.
In five months, three sitting federal judges ruled against Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and 136 former judges filed formal ethics complaints — a concentration that is itself the primary evidence of a directional pattern: the DAG putting himself at the point of decision in matters touching his former client.
We are not charging a specific crime. Any one episode has an innocent read. The record is the density and the direction across all of them — and a professional class institutionally cautious about criticizing sitting DOJ leadership does not pile up like this by chance.
Three sitting U.S. District judges ruled against Blanche in five months — and Judge Emmet Sullivan found DOJ under Blanche 'conceded that he is in violation' of the Executive Financial Transparency Act, ordering the Epstein-related records released.
Phang v. Blanche, No. 26-1417 (D.D.C.), June 25, 2026. Sullivan — a Reagan/Clinton appointee, not politically aligned with the plaintiff — records a DOJ concession in briefing, not a court inference.
A federal judge dismissed the Abrego Garcia prosecution as vindictive and named Blanche by name — 'Blanche started the investigation to implicate Abrego' — after the Attorney General had recused and Blanche took the matter himself.
United States v. Abrego Garcia (M.D. Tenn.), Judge Waverly Crenshaw, May 22, 2026. A vindictive-prosecution dismissal is a rare, high-bar finding. Cited in the June 22 bar complaint.
Blanche personally signed a $1.776B settlement in Trump v. IRS — where his former client Trump sued the department Blanche now runs — within 24 hours of a dismissal that stripped the court's power to review it, plus an audit-immunity clause 'forever' barring the IRS from examining Trump-family returns (est. ~$100M).
Trump v. IRS, No. 26-cv-20609 (S.D. Fla.). Judge Williams reopened it May 29, 2026 on a Rule 60 fraud-on-the-court motion. DOJ later abandoned the $1.776B 'Anti-Weaponization Fund'; the audit-immunity clause remains in force.
The ethics record: an instruction ignored, then formalized against him.
- DOJ's designated ethics official, Joseph Tirrell, briefed Blanche in early 2025 that he must recuse from matters involving Trump; Blanche signed an ethics pledge. Tirrell was later fired.
- Blanche then took personal control of the Epstein files, interviewed Maxwell, signed the Trump v. IRS settlement, and intervened in Abrego Garcia — all inside the scope of that recusal.
- 101 former federal and state judges filed a New York State Bar ethics complaint (June 22, 2026) citing Rules 1.7, 1.9, 8.4 and 3.8; a separate 35 former judges filed the Rule 60 fraud motion — 136 in all.
Blanche personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell over nine hours in July 2025; days later she moved from FCI Tallahassee to a minimum-security camp — a placement BOP's own policy ordinarily bars for a sex offender, with no recorded waiver. Blanche told Congress it was 'low-security to low-security,' contradicted by BOP's own records.
House Judiciary letter to BOP, June 12, 2026; BOP Program Statement 5100.08. Maxwell's attorney said publicly she would testify in exchange for clemency.
Epstein's Zorro Ranch has never been fully searched by federal law enforcement. New Mexico stood down in August 2019 at federal request; the state ran the first-ever search in March 2026; on June 30, 2026 AG Raúl Torrez wrote Blanche calling DOJ's 130-day silence 'unreasonable under any rule of reason.' Blanche has not answered.
The 2007 Acosta non-prosecution agreement was bounded by the Southern District of Florida and never covered New Mexico — so no documented legal basis for the 2019 stand-down appears in the public record.
Senator Wyden says a confidential tip informed his office that DOJ intervened to shelve the DEA's 2015 'Operation Chain Reaction' memo — 69 pages cataloguing ~$50M in Epstein-linked wire transfers and 14 co-conspirator names, all but one redacted. The task force that produced it, OCDETF, had its budget zeroed out under Blanche.
Wyden's March 18, 2026 letter and the OCDETF budget line are FACT; the intervention itself rests on a confidential tip and is graded SOME SMOKE pending release of the underlying document.
What the record shows, and what it does not.
- Three sitting-judge merits rulings and 136 former judges on formal filings, in five months.
- A recusal instruction ignored; a camp transfer against BOP policy; a $1.776B settlement for the former client.
- A never-completed search of Zorro Ranch and a 130-day silence on the state's request.
- That Blanche committed a specific crime, or that any single episode is unexplainable alone.
- That bodies were found at Zorro Ranch, or the viral '10,000 acres' / '$600M deal' / '5,300 documents' figures.
FBI interview notes on an alleged sexual-abuse account naming Trump were in DOJ's possession, requested by Congress, and not produced during the review Blanche supervised — the content stays withheld.
What the withheld FBI interview notes relating to an account naming Donald Trump say, and why they were not produced to Congress under Blanche's review.
Help us fill it →Why it matters now.
The same appointee sits at the point of decision on the Epstein files, the Maxwell transfer, the Trump tax settlement, and the Zorro Ranch stonewall — every time, the outcome favors the former client, and every guardrail meant to catch it has been fired, understaffed, or run out the clock. This is what self-dealing looks like when it runs the Justice Department.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenWhat is in the unredacted DEA materials naming the fourteen co-conspirators in the 2015 'Operation Chain Reaction' memo that AG Raúl Torrez has requested from DOJ but not received?
- OpenWhat do the withheld FBI interview notes relating to an account naming Donald Trump say, and why were they not produced to Congress during the review Blanche supervised?
- OpenWas there any documented legal justification for the 2019 stand-down on searching Zorro Ranch, given the 2007 non-prosecution agreement never covered New Mexico?