A Weird Thing Happened After 1,200+ DOJ Alumni Signed a Letter Opposing Todd Blanche

Since Justice Connection launched its Substack last October, we’ve used it to publish hard-hitting, no-nonsense stories from DOJ alumni about attacks on the institution we all proudly served.

This piece isn’t one of them.

I want to share the bizarre story of what happened after more than 1,200 DOJ alumni sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, highlighting the ways in which Todd Blanche disqualified himself from leading the Justice Department.

In an interview the day we sent the letter, Blanche said, “There’s 1,200 former DOJ employees, I think, out of what – 40,000? I don’t know. I’m not a math guy, but that’s not a very high percentage.”

DOJ itself also had thoughts. In an ad hominem attack, the department called the signatories – the vast majority of whom served in apolitical career roles at DOJ – “a who’s who of partisan activists.” Neither Blanche nor DOJ addressed any of the points we made in the letter.

So I was surprised last Tuesday when someone sent me an article from The Federalist describing “a letter from 77 former Department of Justice officials” calling Blanche “the right man for the right time.” Later in the day I learned that the White House boasted about this endorsement on social media and its official website.

Like Blanche, I’m also not a math guy. But everyone I asked agreed: 1,200 is a much larger number than 77.

Another strange thing about The Federalist article is that it linked to our letter (sent, in their words, by the “absurdly named ‘Justice Connection’”), but it didn’t link to the letter from the 77 alumni. The article named four former officials who signed that letter – all of whom were political appointees during the first or second Trump administration – but we don’t know who the other 73 are or if any of them were career employees, and we don’t know what the letter says.

I’ll also note that while 116 of Blanche’s former colleagues from his Southern District of New York days sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee supporting his nomination to be Deputy Attorney General in 2025, they don’t seem to be publicly supporting his promotion to Attorney General (in fact, 54 former SDNY employees added their names to our letter).

My intention here isn’t to denigrate anyone for supporting Todd Blanche. Instead, I’m sharing this story to call out the administration’s hypocrisy in castigating the more than 1,200 alumni who courageously added their names to our letter opposing this nomination – and to emphasize how meaningful it is that so many former employees joined the chorus of opposition.