The Question I Asked Todd Blanche That He Didn’t Want to Answer

The only thing standing between you and answers on Jeffrey Epstein? Todd Blanche’s security.

Todd Blanche being sworn in as Deputy Attorney General.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

I asked Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche a question he didn’t like. The conversation ended quickly. In a town obsessed with security, he was just as quick to lean on his detail to shut it down.

It was a brief exchange—but a revealing one, offering a glimpse into how the country’s top law enforcement official understands both power and policing, at a moment when his “interim” status is beginning to look less temporary.

It was Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C. At the bar of a private event to which I had been invited, I posed a few questions to Blanche, another guest who had accepted an invitation just like I had.

“Mr. Blanche, are you concerned about a potential conflict of interest between US Attorney Jay Clayton at the Southern District of New York and Leon Black, who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault?” I asked. “Clayton was appointed by Black to chairman of Apollo when he was pushed out.”

Blanche didn’t hesitate.

“That’s not what happened,” he said.

I provided some context he seemed to lack:

“It’s an established fact that Clayton took a top position at a company founded by Black, who is mentioned in the Epstein files and has faced multiple accusations of sexual assault,” I said.

Black appointed Clayton to his role as chairman when he had to step down from Apollo Global Management for paying Epstein $150 million for accounting and estate planning. Clayton had more than $1.5 million in holdings from the private equity firm Black founded before he left for the DOJ in 2025, according to his financial disclosure. This is a glaring conflict of interest that I’ve reported on in The Red Letter but that the mainstream media hasn’t picked up. To me, it may explain why Black and so many other powerful men who have been accused by survivors under oath have not been prosecuted.

“No, you’re wrong, it was something else,” Blanche said.

I calmly pushed back: “Black announced it himself in a statement that Clayton would be replacing him as chairman and Black is accused by many women in the files of sexual assault.” (Black denies this.)

This was the moment that our exchange became less cordial.

“How can you say that? What files are you referring to?” Blanche said.

“The Epstein files. The FBI’s own materials reference Black as a potential co-conspirator,” I said. “There’s a presentation that names him.”

“You shouldn’t be talking about things you don’t understand,” he shot back. “I’ve seen the files. You haven’t. You can’t just make things up.”

“Everyone has seen the Epstein files. They’re public,” I said.

As acting Attorney General, Blanche was primed to have special insight about my areas of inquiry. As a former prosecutor in New York and personal attorney for President Trump, my areas of inquiry would be particularly familiar.

Blanche made like his name in response. While standing under purple lights at the terrace bar, his wife dressed head to toe in black with her blonde hair pulled back said to me, “You’ve ruined our beautiful night.”

Before I could explain, a member of his security detail moved between us and said if I didn’t move away, he would remove me for trespassing.

I had not arrived at the French Ambassador’s residence with explicit plans to learn more about the Justice Department. I was there for the Amethyst Ball, a glitzy confab hosted by members of the Washington perma-class: Steve Clemons, Heather Podesta, Kellyanne Conway, and Ambassador Laurent Bili. The event, nominally an annual celebration of the French-American alliance, was attended by other members of the media as well as officials from the Trump administration and various Beltway creatures.

When Blanche showcased his ideas about American policing by summoning his private security to get between him and questions he didn’t like, he technically did so on French soil.

The Zyn-sponsored lounge hummed with operatives and donors. Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw milled about. Mehmet Oz, the surgeon-turned-celebrity-turned-social-services-administrator, had his very own receiving line. Various other faceless, but influential, Trump officials milled around, seeming to be grateful to get fresh air outside of the grey buildings like the Office of Management and Budget. Men in Revolutionary war costumes handed out champagne while standing in life-sized boxes. Guests noshed on fries and sweet and savory crepes but I struggled to eat, it all made me feel uneasy.

Since Pam Bondi was ousted from her post earlier this month, Blanche has served as her interim replacement, and statements from President Trump and reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere suggests his interim service will become official—an outcome Blanche seems likely to secure thanks to his shrewd understanding of what makes Trump happy. He has renewed focus within the Justice Department on the matter of the president’s spate of hyper-fixations related to injuries to his pride, with investigations active or promised on targets that the rest of the country—consumed by war, inflation, and Epstein Files—had long ago forgotten, such as key players from his impeachments and the investigations that drained the energies of his first administration.

Prior to his stint at the DOJ, Blanche served as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, with extensive experience in financial and securities fraud, public corruption, and organized crime—along with a reputation for controlling the narrative early and shutting down lines of questioning that introduce doubt. Then he found his way to Trump’s legal team, where he managed his defense into defeat in one of his three criminal trials, securing his status as a felon–and an underdog, thus paradoxically securing, at least in the mythic narrative, Trump’s improbable reelection to the presidency. Having stared down the tough odds in and outside the courtroom, Blanche knows what makes his client happy, and there is little indication that his operating procedure will change even if his client, by dint of the oath he will take if confirmed as attorney general, is the United States itself and not the inhabitant of its highest elected office.

“He’s been unleashed,” Trump said at a recent event, according to the Times. “All I know is this man now is doing a fantastic, he’s doing a great job always, but he’s doing a great job as the attorney general.”

Moments like what happened between Blanche and me rarely make it into official accounts of Washington life. They don’t appear in transcripts or readouts. But they reveal something essential about how power operates—not in hearings or press conferences, but in the informal spaces where relationships are maintained and boundaries are enforced.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend is, in theory, a celebration of the press. In practice, it operates as a carefully choreographed ecosystem of access—where journalists, officials, lobbyists, and executives move through the same rooms, bound as much by social contracts as professional ones. Todd Blanche attended multiple events over the course of the weekend, ostensibly in honor of the press, before taking his seat at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as a guest of CBS, alongside the network’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.

This party was ruled by Chatham House rules, a frequently used contract in that ecosystem. You can report on the substance of what was said, just not identify the speaker or their affiliation. These rules are designed to encourage candor, allowing people to speak freely without fear that their words will be publicly attributed to them.

Often they serve that purpose. But they also create a different kind of tension: between the protection of private conversation and the public’s interest in how power behaves when it is questioned.

Chatham House Rule is not a law or industry standard. It is a social contract. After serious consideration—relying on input from colleagues in the press as well as a First Amendment attorney—I have decided to risk violating it. For what it’s worth, whether or not reporting this information with names attached amounts to a violation is unclear; the invitation states, “We respectfully ask that you honor the Chatham House Rule during your attendance.” Arguably, by allowing his security detail into our interaction, Blanche transformed the exchange from casual and social to fraught—and fraught with implication. His security raised the prospect of penalizing me and citing a violation of the law in order to do so— fraudulently.

What the acting attorney general revealed through his words and actions is important information that serves the public interest, and if the consequence for me is that after reporting on it, I won’t be invited to another party at an embassy, I don’t care. That’s not a good reason to neglect my responsibilities as a reporter.

What happened in that moment on Wednesday evening wasn’t just a private exchange of views between two equals. It was a demonstration of something more structural—how quickly a line can be drawn, and by whom, when a conversation moves in an uncomfortable direction.

No one invoked the rules explicitly.

They didn’t have to.

In Washington, everyone in the room already understands them. Unfortunately for Blanche, I understand them well enough to recognize that in this case, they don’t matter.