President-elect Donald Trump‘s decision to appoint his personal criminal defense attorneys to a position in the Department of Justice (DOJ) “does not bode well,” legal analyst Barbara McQuade warned.
Trump announced Thursday that he was nominating Todd Blanche as his next deputy attorney general and Emil Bove as principal associate deputy attorney general. Both attorneys defended Trump against special counsel Jack Smith‘s prosecution of Trump over his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.
Blanche also led Trump’s defense in his Manhattan hush-money case, where the president-elect was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
“Trump’s appointment of his own criminal defense attorneys to top DOJ positions does not bode well,” McQuade, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. “Loyalty seems to be the most important criteria. These officials take an oath to defend the Constitution, not …