Todd Blanche, a former lawyer for President Donald Trump and the current nominee for the second-in-command position at the U.S. Justice Department, earned at least $2.16 million in legal fees over the past year. His clients included Trump, the Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein, and other entities, according to documents made public on Thursday.
The filings, submitted to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, revealed Blanche’s financial disclosures as part of his nomination process. The Office of Government Ethics oversees ethics matters for high-level government officials. Blanche, a former federal prosecutor, was the lead attorney representing Trump in his 2023 New York trial regarding charges tied to hush money payments to an adult film star. As Trump selects members of his legal team for prominent roles in the Justice Department, Blanche has been proposed for the position of deputy U.S. attorney general.
In addition to his work with Trump, the documents showed Blanche’s firm represented several other clients, including Shein, the HongShan Capital Group, a Chinese venture capital and private equity firm, and the cryptocurrency firm CLS Global FZC LLC. Representatives from these companies did not respond to requests for comment on the disclosures.
Blanche appeared before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday for his confirmation hearing. He declined to comment on the financial disclosures when approached by reporters on Thursday.
Public financial filings are a standard requirement for senior executive branch officials, reflecting income earned during the previous calendar year up until the filing date. Blanche, who left Wall Street law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 2023 to open his own practice, primarily to represent Trump, outlined his financial interests in the filing. He indicated plans to divest from Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies held in his Coinbase account and sell shares in companies including Tesla, Pfizer, and Delta Airlines. His financial interests in these companies were listed as under $15,000.
In related news, a U.S. appeals court approved a $725 million settlement in the Facebook data privacy case, which included $181 million in legal fees for the plaintiffs’ lawyers, led by law firms Keller Rohrback and Bleichmar Fonti & Auld. The lawsuit accused Facebook of violating user privacy by enabling Cambridge Analytica and other third parties to harvest user data without consent. Despite objections from some who believed Facebook should pay more, Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, agreed to settle without admitting wrongdoing.
Lastly, the latest report from the Thomson Reuters Institute’s Law Firm Financial Index revealed that law firm profits surged by 11.5% last quarter compared to the previous year, nearing a record high. However, the report noted signs of slowing growth, with a slight decrease in lawyer productivity and rising expenses, which may pose challenges for law firms in the coming months.
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