Michael LucianoMay 11th, 2026, 8:46 pm

President Donald Trump praised acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Monday, saying the lawyer has “kept me out of jail for years.”

Trump nominated Blanche as deputy attorney general before elevating him to acting attorney general after Trump fired Pam Bondi last month. Previously, Blanche served as Trump’s personal attorney during the New York hush money trial in which Trump was convicted in May 2024 on 34 counts of falsifying records to conceal hush money payments to cover up his affair with pornographic actress Stormy Daniels. In January 2025, then-President-Elect Trump was given a sentence of unconditional discharge with no jail time and no fine.

On Monday, the president hosted an event celebrating law enforcement and praised various members of his administration. Trump had some especially colorful remarks when he got around to Blanche:

We have a man who’s doing a great job, I’ll tell you. I knew it, because he kept me out of jail for years. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. He kept me out of jail. They would indict me left and right, the crooked Democrats. You know, it’s amazing. They impeach me. They indict me. Then, when I get in office, if I say something like, “Well, maybe that should be looked into.” ‘Weaponization!”

I go through court cases. I win them because they were fake indictments. But when I even mention like, I said the other day that some of the stuff should be looked into. They said, “Weaponization! He’s a terrible human being. Weaponization”… They blame me for weaponization. They are a crooked bunch and we want to keep it the way it is, what we have now. We have great law enforcement now. We have law enforcement that loves our country, not law enforcement that’s sick and dangerous.

Trump was indicted in three other cases, two of them at the federal level. The president was charged with retaining classified documents and obstructing their retrieval. He was also federally indicted for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. And in Georgia, he was indicted for trying to overturn the results of the election in that state. Upon being elected a second time, the Department of Justice dropped its charges against Trump to comply with a DOJ policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents.

Watch above via C-SPAN.

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