Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General who has already reshaped how the Department of Justice approaches cryptocurrency enforcement, is heading to Capitol Hill for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-July.

President Trump nominated Blanche for the permanent role in June 2026, roughly two months after he stepped into the acting position in April. The mid-July timeline follows the required 28-day paperwork period, meaning senators will have had just enough time to review his record before the questioning begins.

From Trump’s defense table to the DOJ’s top seat

Blanche first entered the DOJ as Deputy Attorney General in early 2025, and his tenure there was anything but quiet.

On April 7, 2025, Blanche issued a memo titled “Ending Regulation by Prosecution” that sent shockwaves through the crypto industry. The directive fundamentally reoriented the DOJ’s approach to digital assets, shifting focus away from prosecuting cryptocurrency platforms and toward targeting individual criminals engaged in fraud and cyber crimes.

The most concrete result of that policy shift: the disbandment of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, the DOJ unit that had been the federal government’s primary vehicle for going after crypto businesses suspected of facilitating illicit activity.

The conflict of interest question

Financial disclosures show Blanche held crypto-related assets valued between $159,000 and $485,000. That’s a wide range, but even the low end represents a meaningful personal stake in the industry he was actively deregulating.

Blanche committed to divesting those crypto assets within 90 days of his earlier confirmation as Deputy Attorney General. Whether that divestment was fully completed before he began making consequential policy decisions about crypto enforcement is a question senators are almost certainly going to raise during the July hearing.

What this means for crypto markets and investors

Disbanding the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team was a structural change, not a temporary pause. Replacing it would require building a new team from scratch, hiring specialists, and reversing years of policy direction.

For crypto businesses operating in the US, this translates to a reduced threat of platform-level prosecution from the DOJ. The department’s stated focus on individual bad actors, rather than the platforms themselves, creates a meaningfully different risk calculus for exchanges, DeFi protocols, and other digital asset infrastructure providers.

With the DOJ stepping back from platform-level enforcement, the SEC and CFTC become even more important as the primary regulators of digital asset markets.