Former FBI Director James Comey, Image via Screengrab / CNN.
Former FBI head James Comey says he has never imaged a scenario when a president’s acting attorney general must consider removing himself from DOJ cases involving the president because of his former role as the president’s defense attorney.
“I never imagined a circumstance where a president would have a criminal defense lawyer who was the acting attorney general,” said Comey, discussing a CNN report that a high-ranking lawyer warned acting AG Todd Blanche to recuse himself from certain cases or risk ruining them.
“So, it seems like it might be new ground they’ve got to look at very carefully,” Comey told CNN anchor Kasie Hunt.
You've argued ... in your previous case, that [your prosecution] was political. Does that not make it inherently about Donald Trump, the person?" Hunt prodded earlier.
"It could," Comey agreed, "but it depends on what that means for the recusal regulations and whether it triggers a need for his former defense attorney to get out of cases."
CNN reports that less than two weeks after Todd Blanche took on his role of deputy attorney general in March 2025 the Justice Department’s top ethics lawyer delivered “some straightforward yet inconvenient news: His recusal from legal cases that involved President Donald Trump in his personal capacity was necessary.”
“The official conducting the briefing, Joseph Tirrell, handed Blanche and his then-top deputy Emil Bove, who was also in the conference room, a printed PowerPoint presentation on ethics,” according to a former senior Justice ethics official who described the meeting to CNN. “The meeting, which hasn’t previously been reported, is the first time Blanche was formally informed he would need to recuse himself from cases involving Trump. Around the same time, the department’s top career lawyer advised that Bove potentially had a conflict of interest by being involved in firings of DOJ lawyers.”
But "recusal" is a perilous word in the Trump era, particularly after former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from overseeing what eventually became the Robert Mueller investigation, and drew years of fire from Trump.
If Blanche, who failed to defend Trump from conviction in the New York hush money case — which ended in his conviction on 34 felony counts — chooses to keep overseeing investigations the president cares deeply about he risks damaging their viability in court, reports CNN.
But the alternative is to “risk incurring the president’s wrath,” CNN adds.