Attorney General Todd Blanche's refusal to pledge that the Justice Department would remain independent of the White House has drawn sharp criticism from conservative commentator Rick Wilson, who argued that the newly sworn-in official's remarks have created "the fundamental grounds" for a future impeachment proceeding.

Over the weekend, Blanche — President Donald Trump's newest appointee — sat for an interview with NBC News in which host Kristin Welker pressed him on whether he could pledge to keep the Justice Department independent from the White House, an arrangement long considered a foundational aspect of the agency. Blanche, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor who left private practice to lead Trump's defense in the New York criminal case that ended in the president's 2024 felony conviction, and who served as Deputy Attorney General earlier in Trump's second term, said he could not make such a pledge, arguing that no attorney general could ever do so.

Justice Department independence from White House political interference has been a governing norm since the Watergate era, when President Richard Nixon's 1973 order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox — the "Saturday Night Massacre" — prompted the resignation of the attorney general and the firing of his deputy, and led to post-Watergate department policies restricting White House contact with prosecutors about pending cases. The question has resurfaced repeatedly during Trump's second term, most notably in early 2025, when several federal prosecutors resigned rather than carry out an order to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Wilson, a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and a vocal conservative critic of the president, tore into Blanche over the remark during his appearance on the latest episode of the "Fast Politics" podcast, alongside host and fellow commentator Molly Jong-Fast. He argued that Blanche had not only created clear grounds for impeachment, but that he had also received confirmation from an elected Democrat that impeachment would be pursued in the future.

"I have to tell you, I texted with a U.S. senator about two minutes before we came on the air, a Democratic U.S. senator, and I said, 'This is the fundamental grounds for your impeachment proceeding against Todd Blanche?'" Wilson detailed. "And he replied, 'yes, it is.'"

Any impeachment effort against Blanche would face a steep procedural bar: bringing articles of impeachment requires a majority vote in the House, and removal requires the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senate. No attorney general has ever been impeached, and the only cabinet officer ever to face impeachment — Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 — was acquitted by the Senate.

He added: "He's gone out there and he said he is absolutely going to serve Donald Trump no matter what he wants, no matter how illegal it is. And the idea that the DOJ is subsidiary to the White House and not an independent judicial or an independent federal law enforcement agency is an astounding abrogation of his duties."

Wilson and Jong-Fast also addressed Blanche's attempt to deflect a question about whether he would refuse an order from Trump that crossed ethical boundaries. The new attorney general did not say that he would refuse such an order; instead, he insisted that Trump would never ask such a thing and never has in the past. According to the pair, this has become a common refrain from Trump officials pressed about going along with his illegal or unethical behavior.

"This is my favorite part: the president asks you to do something that you feel crosses an ethical or legal line, do you do it?" Jong-Fast said. "This is what all of Trump's people have said at every like they figured out a workaround, right, instead of saying no. What the proper answer is, of course, 'I would never do anything illegal.' But Blanche says what everybody says. He says [Trump] would never do that. He never has and he never will. He has. He will."