Todd Blanche, who has been appointed as the Acting Attorney-General following the ouster of his boss Pam Bondi, may find himself back in the spotlight over his holdings of digital assets while he was leading a dramatic pivot to crypto-friendly policies at the US Department of Justice (DoJ).
The Deputy Attorney-General who is also President Donald Trump’s former criminal defence attorney, has come under scrutiny over potential violations of conflict-of-interest laws.
Watchdog group Campaign Legal Center filed a request in January with the Office of Inspectors General at the DoJ demanding a probe into Blanche, whom it alleged in a 30 Jan statement dropped investigations into crypto companies "while holding potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto-related assets."
Propublica said in a December 2025 report that records showed Blanche's crypto holdings at between $159,000 and $485,000. He pledged to divest the assets no later than 90 days after his Senate confirmation in March, according to his government ethics agreement, but before this occurred, Blanche led a sweeping overhaul of the DOJ’s "regulation by enforcement" policies that the Biden administration had used to prosecute the crypto industry.
In a response published by ProPublica on 23 Jan, a DoJ spokesperson refuted the allegations, saying that the matter was "appropriately flagged, addressed, and cleared in advance," calling the reports "another baseless character assassination."
Bondi’s removal followed intense criticism over the DoJ’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation.
