2026年5月14日 上午11:02 美东时间 / CNN
作者：凯特琳·波兰茨、埃文·佩雷斯、汉娜·拉比诺维茨
2025年3月，托德·布兰奇就任副司法部长还不到两周，司法部最高伦理律师就带来了直白却令人为难的消息：他必须回避涉及总统唐纳德·特朗普以个人身份参与的法律案件。
据一位曾在司法部担任高级伦理官员的人士向CNN透露，主持此次通报的约瑟夫·蒂雷尔向布兰奇和当时的首席副手埃米尔·博夫（当时也在会议室）递交了一份打印版的伦理问题PPT演示文稿。
这场此前从未被报道过的会议，是布兰奇首次被正式告知需要回避涉及特朗普的案件。几乎与此同时，司法部顶级职业律师建议博夫可能存在利益冲突，因其参与了解雇司法部律师的相关行动。
然而在特朗普时代，“回避”一词往往伴随着凶险的后果——前司法部长杰夫·塞申斯就曾在回避负责后来成为“穆勒调查”的案件后，遭到特朗普的百般刁难。布兰奇如今面临两难选择：要么监督这位总统极为关注的调查，但可能损害这些调查在法庭上的效力；要么主动回避，却可能招致总统的震怒。
如今身为代理司法部长的布兰奇正陷入伦理困境。他此前曾代表特朗普应对司法部提起的刑事诉讼，如今却调转立场，监督司法部对特朗普所称曾不公正动用刑事司法系统针对他的前政府官员展开的调查。
相关报道
深入解读司法部对约翰·布伦南调查的改组 阅读时长9分钟
这其中就包括一些与特朗普在第一任期结束后因在佛罗里达州不当处理机密文件，以及涉嫌共谋推翻2020年总统选举失利相关的公诉案件。布兰奇曾是这两起联邦法院案件中特朗普的首席辩护律师，这两起案件在最终庭审前均已撤诉。
据这位接受CNN采访的前伦理官员以及提交给政府道德办公室的一份文件显示，布兰奇签署了蒂雷尔向其出示的司法部伦理承诺书。该承诺书要求布兰奇在至少一年内，不得参与涉及布兰奇律师事务所（布兰奇此前代表特朗普处理刑事案件的小型私人律所）过往客户的任何司法部事务。司法部的相关规定同时禁止他“在个人或政治层面与任何参与或利益相关于某项刑事调查或起诉的人员存在关联时，参与该调查或起诉”。
司法部发言人周三表示，布兰奇正在遵守道德义务。
“他已回避了司法部面前的多起案件。对于那些仍在进行且他曾代表过当事人的案件，他均已回避，”这位发言人说道。
司法部并未具体说明布兰奇回避了哪些案件，但这是他们首次公开承认他已回避部分调查。
如今布兰奇的潜在利益冲突更为突出：他任命了前华盛顿特区联邦检察官乔·迪杰诺瓦，重启一项调查，用迪杰诺瓦的话说，这是一场针对特朗普的广泛阴谋，时间跨度从2017年俄罗斯干预选举调查一直到2024年终结的、由特别检察官杰克·史密斯主导的未完成起诉。
迪杰诺瓦驻扎在佛罗里达州皮尔斯堡，该联邦法院除特朗普的案件外几乎没有重大刑事案件。可能被起诉的对象包括前中央情报局局长约翰·布伦南——这是特朗普在起诉政治对手行动中的首要目标之一。布伦南否认有任何不当行为。上周，一位发言人告诉CNN，布兰奇并未回避针对布伦南的调查。
据知情人士透露，在司法部内部，布兰奇已将所谓的“阴谋调查”的监督职责委托给了高级助手。据了解情况的人士表示，近几个月来他未曾参与该调查相关的会议。
伦理备忘录
2025年初，司法部的一位顶级职业律师兼伦理专家曾致信时任司法部长帕姆·邦迪，表达对博夫的担忧：博夫正监督着清除参与特朗普相关公诉的司法部雇员的行动，据两位知情人士向CNN透露。
博夫的发言人周四未立即回复置评请求。
据其中一位知情人士透露，这份抄送司法部职业责任办公室和监察长办公室的备忘录指出，博夫在纽约南区担任检察官时曾参与过国会山骚乱事件被告的调查，因此他不应参与司法部所谓的“反武器化计划”。去年备忘录提交后不久，备忘录的撰写者就被解雇了。
尽管收到了上述建议，博夫仍继续监督邦迪上任后成立的“武器化工作组”，该工作组旨在推翻拜登时代的司法部举措——包括改写针对国会山骚乱参与者的公诉，而这些举措被特朗普认定为不公。
博夫去年离开司法部，成为上诉法院法官。
利益冲突在司法部并非罕见
目前尚不清楚布兰奇自与蒂雷尔会面后是否曾向司法部内部寻求指导，尽管他去年在参议院确认听证会上曾表示会遵守司法部工作人员提供的法律伦理指导。
“在往届政府中，高级官员通常会寻求建议，”尤其是在利益冲突难以界定的情况下，司法部职业责任咨询办公室前副主任本杰明·格赖姆斯近期表示。
利益冲突的情况并不少见。
在拜登政府期间，副司法部长丽莎·莫纳科回避了对总统乔·拜登涉嫌不当处理机密文件（最终未提起指控）以及亨特·拜登相关调查的监督工作。莫纳科曾在拜登过渡团队任职，且在奥巴马政府期间与副总统关系密切。一份内部备忘录记录了她的回避决定，但并未公开。
在乔治·W·布什政府期间，司法部长约翰·阿什克罗夫特回避了针对前中情局特工瓦莱丽·普莱姆身份泄露的调查。他援引自己与布什总统以及其他可能成为该调查证人的高级政府官员的密切政治关系作为理由。
但特朗普第二届政府时期的司法部打破了诸多过往的制度规范，包括白宫与司法部之间传统的分离原则。
格赖姆斯担忧，作为布兰奇前私人客户的特朗普，将成为唯一能够评估并决定是否可以克服特朗普个人与司法部之间利益冲突的上级。
“这是一个无法克服的利益冲突，”如今已是哥伦比亚法学院教授的格赖姆斯说道。
格赖姆斯还表示，如果特朗普希望从司法部获取对其个人有利的信息，这同样会是个问题。
日渐薄弱的伦理防火墙
自去年春天那场会议以来，特朗普政府已大幅削减了司法部的职业伦理人员和职业责任办公室的编制，也没有填补那些多年来为部长们解答过诸多棘手问题的资深顾问的空缺。
曾向布兰奇通报回避事宜的伦理官员蒂雷尔于7月被解雇，此后他起诉司法部索要赔偿。
据多位熟悉司法部的消息人士透露，司法部内部职业责任办公室的职业雇员也同样被解雇，其中包括一个负责确保司法部律师不逾越伦理红线、以免危及律师执业资格的部门主管。
在蒂雷尔被解雇两周后，布兰奇采取了不同寻常的举措：在被监禁期间，他会见了已定罪的人口贩运者吉斯莱恩·马克斯韦尔——已故金融家、定罪性犯罪者杰弗里·爱泼斯坦的前女友。在会面中，布兰奇询问了马克斯韦尔与特朗普在特朗普当选总统多年前的交往情况，马克斯韦尔称特朗普未曾有任何不当行为。
布兰奇和本届政府的其他官员持续面临伦理挑战，尤其是在他们的新闻发布会频频凸显联邦执法机构正在执行特朗普的意愿甚至报复行动之际。
在布兰奇作为代理司法部长的首次新闻发布会上，他曾明确对特朗普说道：“我爱你，先生。”
如果布兰奇不回避涉及特朗普个人的调查，他可能面临的后果微乎其微。
一些法律专家告诉CNN，如果未来在特朗普相关案件或特朗普可能存在个人利益的事项中出现刑事指控，辩护律师可以在初审法院对这些案件提出质疑，主张如果布兰奇曾参与决策，那么起诉程序存在不当之处。
但在很大程度上，监督职责落在了议员身上，既然布兰奇领导着司法部，议员们可以要求他作出解释。
“如果国会或公众认为这一情况难以接受，国会就必须采取行动。在我看来，这确实难以接受，”这位前司法部职业伦理顾问格赖姆斯本周对CNN说道。
Exclusive: Acting AG Todd Blanche was told last year to recuse from Justice Department matters involving Trump
2026-05-14 11:02 AM ET / CNN
By Katelyn Polantz, Evan Perez, Hannah Rabinowitz
Todd Blanche, acting US attorney general, on April 25, in Washington, DC.
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
It was less than two weeks after Todd Blanche took on his role of deputy attorney general in March 2025 when the Justice Department’s top ethics lawyer delivered some straightforward yet inconvenient news: His recusal from legal cases that involved President Donald Trump in his personal capacity was necessary.
The official conducting the briefing, Joseph Tirrell, handed Blanche and his then-top deputy Emil Bove, who was also in the conference room, a printed PowerPoint presentation on ethics, according to a former senior Justice ethics official who described the meeting to CNN.
The meeting, which hasn’t previously been reported, is the first time Blanche was formally informed he would need to recuse himself from cases involving Trump. Around the same time, the department’s top career lawyer advised that Bove potentially had a conflict of interest by being involved in firings of DOJ lawyers.
Recusal, however, is a word that comes with treacherous consequences in the Trump era — including in the case of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions who Trump tormented after he recused himself from overseeing what eventually became the Mueller investigation. Blanche’s choice is either to oversee investigations the president cares deeply about but risk damaging their viability in court or to recuse himself and risk incurring the president’s wrath.
Now serving as acting attorney general, Blanche finds himself in an ethical quandary. His previous role representing Trump in criminal prosecutions brought by the Justice Department means that he is switching sides, overseeing the department’s investigation of the former government officials whom Trump claims unfairly used the criminal justice system to target him.
Related article Inside the Justice Department’s shakeup of the John Brennan investigation 9 min read
That includes some who were connected to the prosecutions of Trump for mishandling classified records in Florida after his first term, and allegedly conspiring to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Blanche was Trump’s primary defense lawyer in both federal court cases, which were dismissed prior to being fully resolved in court.
Blanche signed the department’s ethics pledge laid out to him by Tirrell, according to the former ethics official who spoke to CNN and a document submitted to the Office of Government Ethics. That pledge included requirements for Blanche to not participate for at least a year in any of the department’s matters involving past clients of the Blanche Law Group, the small private law firm Blanche used to represent Trump in the criminal cases. The department’s regulations also prohibit his participation “in any criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship” with anyone who was involved in or has an interest in that investigation or prosecution.
Former CIA director John Brennan testifies before the House Intelligence Committee to take questions on “Russian active measures during the 2016 election campaign” in the US. Capitol in Washington, DC, on May 23, 2017.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
A Justice Department spokeswoman said Wednesday that Blanche is complying with ethical obligations.
“He is recused from many cases before DOJ. In any cases that are still ongoing where he previously represented someone, he is recused,” the spokeswoman said.
The department didn’t specify which cases Blanche is recused from, but this was the first time they’ve publicly acknowledged that he has recused from some investigations.
The potential conflict is more acute now that Blanche has installed Joe diGenova, a former US attorney for DC, to reinvigorate an investigation into what diGenova has outlined as a broad conspiracy against Trump spanning from the 2017 Russian election interference probe to the aborted Special Counsel Jack Smith prosecutions that ended in 2024.
DiGenova is based in Fort Pierce, Florida, a federal court with few major criminal cases aside from Trump’s. Among those targeted for possible prosecution is John Brennan, the former CIA director — a top priority for Trump in his efforts to prosecute his political foes. Brennan denies wrongdoing. Last week, a spokesperson told CNN Blanche had not recused from the investigation into Brennan.
Inside the Justice Department, Blanche has delegated oversight of the so-called conspiracy investigation to top aides, people briefed on the matter said. He has not participated in meetings on the probe in recent months, according to people briefed on the matter.
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during a press conference at the Justice Department in Washington, DC, on April 7.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The ethics memo
In early 2025, a top career lawyer at the department and an ethics expert, wrote a memo to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi raising concerns that Bove was overseeing the effort to purge Justice Department employees who were involved in Trump-related prosecutions, two people briefed on the matter told CNN.
A spokesperson for Bove didn’t immediately return a request for comment Thursday.
The memo, copied to the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Inspector General, noted that Bove had worked on investigations of January 6 Capitol riot defendants when he was a prosecutor in New York’s southern district. And so he shouldn’t be involved in the department’s so-called anti-weaponization plans, the memo said, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. The memo’s author was pushed out soon after it was delivered last year.
Despite the advice, Bove continued to oversee the Weaponization Working Group that Bondi set up upon taking office in an effort to undo Biden-era Justice Department efforts Trump deems unfair – including by rewriting the January 6 rioter prosecutions.
Bove left the department to become an appeals court judge last year.
A sign marks the location of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) headquarters building on April 30, 2025, in Washington, DC.
J. David Ake/Getty Images
Conflicts of interest aren’t uncommon within the Justice Department
It’s not known whether Blanche has asked for internal department guidance since his briefing with Tirrell, even though he said during his Senate confirmation hearing last year that he would follow the legal ethics guidance the department’s staff gave to him.
“It was typical in past administrations for senior officials to solicit advice,” especially when conflicts of interest were a close call, Benjamin Grimes, the former deputy director of DOJ’s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, said recently.
The conflicts of interest aren’t uncommon.
During the Biden administration, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco recused herself from investigations of President Joe Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, which didn’t result in charges, and an investigation of Hunter Biden. Monaco had served in the Biden transition team and during the Obama administration worked closely with the vice president. An internal memo recorded her recusal but wasn’t made public.
During the George W. Bush administration, Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation into the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. He cited his close political relationship with President Bush and other top administration officials who would be potential witnesses in the probe.
But the Justice Department during the second Trump term has broken with many past institutional norms, including the traditional separation between the White House and the department.
Grimes has concerns that Trump, Blanche’s former private client, would be his only superior who could evaluate and decide whether a conflict of interest between Trump personally and the Justice Department can be overcome.
“It’s a conflict that is insurmountable,” Grimes, now a Columbia Law School professor, said.
It’s also a problem, Grimes said, if Trump were to want information out of the Justice Department that would benefit him personally.
A thinning ethics firewall
Since that meeting last spring, the Trump administration has gutted both the department’s career ethics staff and its office of professional responsibility, and not replaced well-respected advisers for Justice Department headquarters who had over the years advised on some of the thorniest questions for leaders.
Tirrell, the ethics official who had briefed Blanche on recusal, was fired in July. He has since sued the Justice Department seeking compensation.
So were career employees within the department who worked in the Office of Professional Responsibility, including the director of a unit tasked with making sure DOJ attorneys didn’t cross ethical lines that could endanger their law licenses, several sources familiar with the department say.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, right, leaves his hotel for the federal courthouse, Friday, July 25, 2025, in Tallahassee, Florida, to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned former girlfriend of financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Colin Hackley/AP
Two weeks after the firing of Tirrell, Blanche took the unusual step of interviewing convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, a former partner of the late Jeffrey Epstein, while she serves time in prison. In that interview, Blanche asked Maxwell about her interactions with Trump many years before he became president, and she said Trump had done no wrong.
Ethics challenges continue to arise for Blanche and others in the administration, especially as their press conferences often highlight how federal law enforcement is carrying out Trump’s wishes, and even retribution.
In his first press conference as acting attorney general, Blanche notably remarked, “I love you, sir,” to Trump.
The possible consequences for Blanche, if he doesn’t recuse from investigations involving Trump personally, may be thin.
If criminal charges were to arise in the future related to the Trump cases or in matters where Trump could have a personal interest, defense attorneys could challenge those cases in trial-level courts arguing the prosecutions weren’t handled appropriately if Blanche played a decision-making role, some legal experts have told CNN.
But largely, the backstop falls on lawmakers, who can demand answers from Blanche now that he leads the department.
“Congress needs to take action if either Congress or the public find this to be untenable. And it is to me,” Grimes, the former Justice Department professional ethics adviser, told CNN this week.