DOJ Tracker: June Update

Our monthly update to track the attacks on the rule of law and the Justice Department. Here’s what you need to know from June.

Welcome back to our Substack series to help you stay informed and engaged in protecting the Justice Department. Each month, we pull highlights from Justice Connection’s DOJ Tracker to offer a more digestible way to keep up with the latest attacks.

Here’s what happened in June.

Todd Blanche Nomination

On June 5, President Trump formally nominated Todd Blanche to serve as the next Attorney General.

Todd Blanche has been serving as Deputy Attorney General since March 2025 and Acting Attorney General since April 2026. In that time, he has overseen a purge of DOJ’s apolitical career workforce and advanced the politicization of the department, undermining both the rule of law and public safety. Justice Connection put together a fact sheet of actions Blanche or his office has directly taken to harm the department.

Justice Connection issued a statement saying, “Todd Blanche has never stopped acting as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. He has used his high position at the department to enter into a corrupt deal with the president and his family, advance vindictive prosecutions, illegally fire career employees, smear whistle-blowers and attack the judiciary.

“Blanche has abandoned what he learned about blind justice and ethical law enforcement as a career federal prosecutor. His unwavering fealty to the President and destruction of institutional norms should disqualify him from leading the only agency with its foundational virtue in its name.”

Since his nomination, details have come to light about how Blanche’s office shut down investigations into the business practices of a Republican Senator and a potential pay-for-play pardon scheme.

Unlike many political appointees at DOJ, he learned during his years as a career prosecutor why it’s crucial for the department to enforce the law impartially. But his time in leadership shows that he’s there to serve the president — his former client — and not the public.

Blanche’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for July 15 and 16.

Stephen Miller’s Influence

Stephen Miller’s influence over DOJ’s operations appears to have continued. Two separate reports emerged last month providing new insight into the sway Miller might have over prosecutorial decisions.

The New York Times reported that a letter from conservative groups to Miller in part prompted DOJ’s investigation and subsequent indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center in April. An FBI document from October, when it opened an inquiry, closely reflects the language of the letter that was sent in September. The Times noted another potential reason why Miller wanted DOJ to target SPLC: “In 2019, SPLC wrote a series of articles drawing on hundreds of Mr. Miller’s emails to assert that in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, he promoted white nationalist literature and ‘racist immigration stories.’”

Separately, Bloomberg reported that Miller was the “driving force” behind an Office of Legal Counsel memo retracting state responsibilities towards individuals with disabilities. According to the article, Miller was concerned that settlement agreements requiring states to move individuals from institutions to in-home or community-based services would increase homelessness, contrary to President Trump’s 2025 executive order pressuring local governments to move homeless people to institutions. (The White House and DOJ both denied Miller had a hand in the OLC memo, and DOJ denied his involvement in the SPLC investigation.)

Something fishy at Antitrust

For months, there have been stories of political influence and lobbying at the Antitrust Division, leading to sudden resolutions of major cases like the Juniper/HPE merger and the Live Nation/Ticketmaster trial. In February, Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater left the department. While she didn’t cite a specific reason for her departure, it came after months of clashes with Blanche and former Attorney General Bondi, including an episode where Bondi’s then-chief of staff fired two Slater aides who disagreed with department leadership on settling Juniper/HPE.

This month, department leaders have taken further steps to bring the Antitrust Division under their control. On June 9, Blanche put Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward in charge of the division until a new AAG is confirmed. Woodward had been instrumental in pushing the Juniper/HPE settlement through, overriding pushback from career staff. Within weeks of heading the Antitrust Division, Woodward made it clear to staff attorneys that he preferred to settle cases over going to trial.

News also broke last month that the White House was deeply involved in the Live Nation/Ticketmaster settlement that took the country by surprise. According to NBC News, President Trump spoke with the CEO of Live Nation ahead of the settlement and lawyers from the White House Counsel’s Office were involved in negotiating the terms. DOJ and more than 30 states had been building the case for years, only for the department’s political leadership to announce a settlement after the first week of trial. Likewise, on June 12, DOJ leadership approved Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros before career attorneys could weigh in. Staff attorneys had reportedly been leaning towards challenging the deal.

President Trump is expected to nominate Adam Candeub to be the next AAG. Candeub currently serves as general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission — the same FCC that had pressured ABC into firing Jimmy Kimmel — and is a well-known critic of Big Tech for allegedly censoring free speech online.

Here are a few other things you might’ve missed:

• Despite telling lawmakers at a congressional hearing that the Anti-Weaponization Fund would not move forward, Acting Attorney General Blanche has refused to formalize the decision in writing. A day after Blanche’s hearing, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward indicated on X that DOJ was looking for alternative ways to compensate so-called “weaponization victims.” The Atlantic reported that DOJ and White House officials were exploring various methods behind the scenes. On June 19, a court deadline for Blanche to submit verification that the cancellation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund passed without a signed declaration. Meanwhile, Blanche is reportedly assuring Senators concerned about the fund that he is willing to formally kill it.

• On June 9, DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion finding that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission violated federal civil rights law by using the disparate impact theory of discrimination.

  • In a statement to CBS, Justice Connection said, “Discriminatory outcomes don’t always result from explicit animus, which is why disparate impact liability has been a cornerstone of civil rights enforcement for decades. Requiring plaintiffs in all civil rights cases to demonstrate discriminatory intent is contrary to Supreme Court law, and will lead to a sharp increase in unchecked discrimination.”

• Reuters reported that 96% of clemency grants under this administration have not followed longstanding DOJ guidelines. Instead, clemency is highly dependent on an applicant’s access to Presidenoot Trump’s inner circle and their appeal to the president’s own sense of victimization.

• DOJ announced that it will rename the Environment and Natural Resources Division to the Energy and Natural Resources Division to “advance U.S. energy dominance.”

  • In a Justice Connection statement denouncing the move, advisory committee member Andy Mergen said the “name change is best understood not as serving the public, for whom the department works, but instead as catering to the priorities of the President and an Administration that has cynically invoked ‘national security’ and so-called energy ‘emergencies’ to evade compliance with environmental laws.”

• The Office of the Inspector General provided Senate Republicans with highly-sensitive interview transcripts from the 2016 Russia probe, setting a precedent that breaks its own disclosure rules.

  • As Justice Connection told Bloomberg, “If a whistleblower or a witness or a crime victim or a former employee who the IG has no authority to compel thinks the inspector general will share their information with Congress, they will be less likely to cooperate with the inspector general.”