President Donald Trump looks on in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., August 14, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump's latest victory in Congress is a massive "loss" for the country, according to one former federal prosecutor, who further argued that it represents the "worst appointment" yet in a long parade of terrible appointments.
James D. Zirin previously served as a prosecutor for the Southern District of New York and now regularly publishes legal analysis and op-eds for The Hill. In his latest piece for the outlet from Tuesday morning, Zirin tore into the appointment of Todd Blanche as attorney general, calling it an act worthy of "shame" for the GOP-controlled Senate, and lambasted him as the worst of Trump's second term, an achievement with an extremely high bar.
"It is to the shame of the U.S. Senate that Blanche is now confirmed," Zirin wrote. "It is the worst appointment of the second Trump administration. Yes, you heard me — worse than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard or Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem put together, because he will serve only President Trump, not our precious rule of law."
He added further: "Ask the more than 1,200 of Blanche’s Department of Justice colleagues who urged the Senate to reject his nomination. Ask the 35 former federal judges from across the country who have argued he committed a fraud on the court. Incumbent federal judges have said that the Justice Department under his aegis is no longer entitled to the presumption of regularity. He has lied to the courts once too often. In July, a judge forced Blanche’s prosecutors to withdraw subpoenas served on New York Times reporters at their homes, finding serious irregularities."
Zirin further highlighted the trend of failed grand jury indictments at the DOJ under Blanche, including the failure to convince even "a single grand juror to sign off on proposed criminal charges against six Democratic lawmakers who released a video encouraging members of the military to refuse illegal orders," and the failure to indict a man for throwing a sandwich at a federal agent. The issue, he explained, is "not that he lost," but that even tried to pursue such cases in the first place, asking, "Where is the judgment?"
"Then, there is the elephant in the room: the Epstein files, with the drip-feed, heavily redacted disclosure Blanche handled, not to mention his callous mistreatment of Epstein’s victims," he continued. "A New York Times report by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan exposed that Blanche handled the Epstein case as a matter of politics, and key decisions were made by Blanche in collaboration with the White House."
He concluded later: "In 1940, Attorney General Robert Jackson declared in the prosecutor’s creed that, 'the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.' Blanche has been confirmed to serve 'factional purposes.' If he is not 'perfect,' he should not have been confirmed."
