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On Monday, August 10, Todd Blanche took the oath of office as attorney general, administered by federal appeals court judge Emil Bove, another of Trump\u2019s defense lawyers before moving to the Department of Justice, where he was Blanche\u2019s top deputy. In that capacity, CNN\u2019s Hannah Rabinowitz recalled, he fired career prosecutors and pushed Trump\u2019s takeover of the department.<\/span><\/p>\n Using Bove to swear in Blanche looked like a victory lap for the Trump team. Although the press was excluded, two other Trump loyalists, FBI director Kash Patel and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, attended Blanche\u2019s swearing-in.<\/span><\/p>\n Retired conservative judge J. Michael Luttig told MS NOW: \u201cTodd Blanche now becomes the symbol of Donald Trump\u2019s corruption of the rule of law in America and the actual ruin of the Department of Justice of the United States. This is another shameful act of acquiescence, if not obeisance, by the Senate Republicans; they will bear this badge of shame the rest of their lives.<\/span><\/p>\n Never before in American history has an attorney general been confirmed who was as corrupt as Todd Blanche. The Department of Justice is already in shambles.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnd,\u201d Luttig added, \u201che will further ruin the Department of Justice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As soon as he took office, Blanche issued a memo dramatically expanding executive privilege, which he described as the authority of the president to \u201cwithhold certain sensitive information for the public good.\u201d Executive privilege has enabled the president to shield conversations with key advisors from public scrutiny with the logic that a president must be able to get a wide range of advice, given freely, by those in the executive branch.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, though, the Department of Justice under Blanche says the president can shield \u201cpresidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decisionmaking.\u201d The memo defines as a \u201cprivate adviser\u201d \u201canyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch.\u201d As John Light of <\/span>Talking Points Memo<\/span><\/em> notes, this definition would enable the White House to defy congressional subpoenas for anyone to whom the president talks.<\/span><\/p>\n As Avery Lotz of <\/span>Axios<\/span><\/em> reports, Democrats had been planning to begin investigations of Trump\u2019s corruption if they retake control of the House and\/or the Senate. Recognizing that the White House would stonewall them, they intended to subpoena companies, college officials, and private citizens to testify. The memo, which is not legally binding but which indicates the administration\u2019s position, would hamper that effort.<\/span><\/p>\n Lotz notes that the administration is already fighting a subpoena in a lawsuit filed by the American Bar Association that orders Trump\u2019s senior personal lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, to testify about the deals the Trump administration struck with major law firms early in his second term.<\/span><\/p>\n Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) wrote: \u201cThis latest opinion should be seen as a partisan measure to insulate the president and his corrupt activities from Congressional subpoenas when the majority flips.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Thursday was the day that Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held a status conference in the case of <\/span>Phang v. Blanche<\/span><\/em>. This is a lawsuit brought by independent journalist Katie Phang to force the Department of Justice to produce unredacted versions of documents from the Epstein files that she says were redacted against the explicit instructions in the Epstein Files Transparency Act. With that law, Congress ordered the Department of Justice to release all the files gathered by the FBI investigation into sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, with redactions only to protect victims, no later than December 19, 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n Almost eight months later, the Department of Justice has refused to do so, probably producing about half the files, with many of the documents heavily redacted at the same time that it released some of the victim\u2019s names, photographs, and identifying information.<\/span><\/p>\n As legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained in her <\/span>Civil Discourse<\/span><\/em>, Phang sued in April for access to an unredacted version of a handful of files, including emails about a \u201ctorture video\u201d and sexual activity with girls, as well as notes from FBI interviews with a victim who claims Trump sexually assaulted her when she was 13 and materials in foreign languages, which the Department of Justice has not produced at all. She also asked the Department of Justice to explain why they made the redactions they did, something the law requires but the Justice Department has not done.<\/span><\/p>\n In late June, Sullivan granted Phang\u2019s request.<\/span><\/p>\n But the Department of Justice under then\u2013acting attorney general Todd Blanche, who interviewed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell shortly before she was transferred to a far less restrictive prison that should have been inaccessible to a sex offender, did not turn over those documents.<\/span><\/p>\n So, in July, Sullivan ordered the government to turn over the unredacted documents to him so he could review them himself to see if the decision by the Department of Justice not to release them was correct. Once again, the Department of Justice refused. As for an explanation for why the department hadn\u2019t explained the decisions to redact, the Justice Department lawyer told the judge the process was \u201cunderway\u201d but couldn\u2019t say when it would be done or why translating documents in foreign languages wasn\u2019t practical. He claimed the materials the department is withholding are simply duplicates of things that have been released, but offered no proof of that assertion.<\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, as Vance explains, Sullivan asked: \u201c\u201cSo you\u2019re saying I\u2019ve learned everything I\u2019m going to learn from the government?\u201d The lawyer for the Department of Justice, Andrew Block, answered: \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Sullivan wasn\u2019t satisfied. \u201cThe public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case. The victims have a right to know. The court has a right to know. The law is still in full force and effect. The court is just ensuring compliance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n To make it clear he was being reasonable, in expectation of a review from a higher court, Sullivan repeatedly told Block he was willing to work with the department, but warned that he had held prosecutors in contempt of court in the past. Sullivan gave Phang\u2019s lawyers 10 days to propose an order to deal with the failure of the Department of Justice to comply with his orders to produce the files Phang requested.<\/span><\/p>\n The administration is also undermining another popular law. This week, under Trump, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in the Treasury Department not only ended the registry Congress set up in 2021 over Trump\u2019s veto to make shell companies identify their owners, but also destroyed all the data it has already collected.<\/span><\/p>\n FinCEN combats money laundering. Congress set up the Corporate Transparency Act after documents leaked to BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2020 found that between 1999 and 2017, banks had flagged more than $2 trillion in potentially laundered money, moved by criminals operating out of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria through shell companies. These are legal entities that don\u2019t have physical plants or operations, but can be used for holding and moving money.<\/span><\/p>\n Shell companies also meant that the political system in the U.S. was awash in secrecy. \u201c[I]t\u2019s illegal for foreigners to contribute to our campaigns,\u201d one Democrat reminded Congress in a speech for the bill, \u201cbut if you launder your money through a front company with anonymous ownership there is very little we can do to stop you.\u201d One of the documents flagged how much Russian money was flowing into the U.S. in 2016 through Deutsche Bank.<\/span><\/p>\n The U.S. was the easiest place in the world for criminals to form an anonymous shell company enabling them to launder money, evade taxes, and engage in illegal payoff schemes\u2014Trump\u2019s fixer Michael Cohen used a shell company to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from taking the story of her sexual encounter with Trump public before the 2016 election. So Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act to undercut the shell companies that enabled money laundering in America.<\/span><\/p>\n The act required the owners of any company that was not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file a report that identifies each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercises substantial control over it. That report, including name, birthdate, address, and an identifying number, would go to FinCEN. The measure also increased penalties for money laundering and streamlined cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.<\/span><\/p>\n The plan was to pull the rug out from both domestic and international criminals that take advantage of shell companies to hide from investigators. The measure passed on a bipartisan basis; then-senator Marco Rubio of Florida, now secretary of state, co-sponsored it, calling it the \u201cmost significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Now the Treasury Department says it will not collect the information the law requires, raising the question of whether the Trump administration is openly refusing to implement a law.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Notes:<\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/abcnews.com\/US\/doj-releasing-additional-material-epstein-files\/story?id=129680518<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/todd-blanche-sworn-in-as-attorney-general-after-bruising-confirmation-battle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/08\/10\/politics\/emil-bove-swearing-in-todd-blanche-attorney-general<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/olc\/media\/1457271\/dl<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/the-brief\/trump-administration-braces-for-a-possible-democratic-congress<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/08\/11\/trump-doj-executive-privilege-democratic-probes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.icij.org\/investigations\/fincen-files\/global-banks-defy-u-s-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/12\/us\/politics\/treasury-scrutiny-shell-companies.html<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/08\/11\/trump-doj-executive-privilege-democratic-probes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n