Todd Blanche responds to a question as he testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination for deputy attorney general and Abigail Slater for assistant attorney general on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 12, 2025. After firing the head of the Library of Congress, the president put his former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, in charge of the facility. (Pete Kiehart/The New York Times)
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WASHINGTON — The No. 2 official at the Justice Department has also been temporarily put in charge of the Library of Congress, a department official said Monday.
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general for the past two months, is the latest Trump administration official to take on interim, but additional, leadership positions as President Donald Trump dismisses senior agency officials.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has a number of temporary titles, including interim national security adviser, even as he holds down a full-time job overseeing the country’s foreign policy. FBI Director Kash Patel simultaneously supervised the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives earlier this year until he was replaced by Daniel Driscoll, the Army secretary, in April.
Blanche, who was Trump’s lead defense lawyer in his criminal trial in Manhattan last year, takes over as the acting Librarian of Congress from Carla Hayden.
Hayden, who had served in the job since 2016, was dismissed for what the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said was pushing “inappropriate books in the library for children.”
That characterization was curious: The library is a research facility limited to people 16 years or older.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By Devlin Barrett/Pete Kiehart
c. The New York Times Company
