Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump's former personal defense lawyer, has personally inserted himself into a string of small-scale voter fraud prosecutions in Nevada, according to court records cited in a Law and Crime report.

"[T]he nation's top law enforcement official has personally inserted himself into small-scale voter fraud cases against four people in Nevada, according to court records," Law and Crime writer Colin Kalmbacher reported.

The four October cases, each charging a misdemeanor count of "voting by alien," all carry an "unexpected" name atop the signature block of the charging document: Attorney General Todd Blanche, the president's former personal attorney. All four misdemeanor prosecutions were brought by criminal information, meaning the defendants have not been indicted by a grand jury. Because a criminal information is signed by the prosecutor rather than returned by a grand jury, the name on the document identifies precisely who is exercising the government's charging power. Kalmbacher observed that attaching the name of Justice Department leadership to low-level offenses is "unusual," and that the appearance of a U.S. attorney general on such a document is "rarer still."

"The Attorney General himself signing a criminal information is extremely rare if it has even ever been done before," said Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor and former Westchester district attorney. "It raises huge red flags about why he is doing so in any particular case."

A Law and Crime sample of filings by federal prosecutors in Nevada in October also shows Blanche attached his name to other matters that "run the gamut from coercion allegations (charged by information) to a bank robbery sentencing disagreement (charged by a complaint)," as shown in the coercion filing and bank robbery filing. While the high-profile nature of the voter fraud cases may explain Blanche's personal investment, Kalmbacher reported there may be "another factor" influencing procedure.

The attorney general sits atop the Justice Department and its nationwide network of U.S. attorney's offices, including the Nevada office handling these filings. "In a recurring controversy during the second Trump administration, the White House has given up on Senate confirmation for such positions, opting for a series of lesser appointments provided by various statutes," Kalmbacher wrote. "First assistant U.S. attorney and special attorney Sigal Chattah currently runs the Nevada office — after a court found she was unlawfully appointed to the U.S. attorney role."

Cases filed without confirmed attorneys general at the helm have frequently been tossed from courts, and in some instances entire cases have been thrown out, giving defense attorneys the chance to dismantle prosecutions in which since-disqualified Trump appointees signed as prosecutors. In that context, the report suggested, the identity of the official whose name appears on a charging paper may carry procedural significance of its own.

Nevada, meanwhile, may be a special case, having proved an especially difficult target for the Trump Justice Department. "The loudly announced voter fraud prosecutions come on the heels of a recent embarrassment for the Trump administration," Law and Crime reported. "Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security claimed there were some 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada's voter rolls. Over the summer, those claims were walked back to just 185 such alleged noncitizens, until Nevada authorities determined that every one of them was actually a citizen."

Critics say that Blanche, who failed to prevent Trump's conviction in the hush-money case involving payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, has used his post atop the Justice Department to advance the president's interests. The Guardian reported that the interim attorney general has "aggressively moved to deploy the department's resources to please [president] Donald Trump," "leaving little doubt about how the president's former personal attorney would further politicize the department if his status atop US law enforcement becomes permanent." Whether Blanche's status atop the department becomes permanent — the contingency the Guardian attached to its assessment — remains an open question.

The report was originally published by Alternet.