Posts claim Trump appointed Ghislaine Maxwell's former defense attorney as acting AG. Here's the real story

Claim:

U.S. President Donald Trump appointed convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell's former defense attorney as acting attorney general to head the Department of Justice in April 2026.

Rating:

False (About this rating?)

Context:

Trump appointed Todd Blanche as acting attorney general on April 2, 2026. Blanche is Trump's former defense attorney, not Maxwell's.

In April 2026, social media users claimed the former defense attorney for Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking crimes connected to her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, was "now acting Attorney General" of the United States. 

The rumor circulated on X and Facebook. 

(X user Epstein File Search)

U.S. President Donald Trump appointed Todd Blanche as acting attorney general on April 2, 2026. Blanche was never Maxwell's defense attorney. Thus, we have rated this claim as false. 

In truth, Blanche represented Trump, not Maxwell, in a range of legal cases, including the hush-money trial that led to the president's felony conviction.

This rumor may have originated from the fact that Blanche interviewed Maxwell in 2025 when he was deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice. 

Blanche never represented Maxwell

Given the highly publicized nature of Maxwell's criminal case, if Blanche had represented Maxwell in any capacity — especially while also defending Trump — it would have made news. A Google search for Maxwell and Blanche's names, set to return results from before 2024, indicated that no reputable news outlets had reported that Blanche was Maxwell's defense attorney. 

Furthermore, Blanche's career and its timeline did not align with the kind of defense counsel that Maxwell has required. 

Blanche graduated from law school in 2003 and started working in 2006 as a federal prosecutor in New York, according to his verified LinkedIn profile. 

In 2014 he moved to the private firm WilmerHale to focus on "investigations and criminal litigation matters." He became a "white collar defense and investigations" partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, a financial services law firm, in 2017 and stayed there until 2023. 

In other words, Blanche's work did not focus on civil cases, but on criminal ones. Maxwell was named in numerous civil lawsuits between 2009 and 2023 — but she did not face criminal charges until 2020, when the FBI arrested her on suspicion of conspiring to sexually abuse minors. She was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.

As a white-collar defense lawyer, Blanche represented high-profile people accused of financial fraud, such as former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Sex trafficking is not considered a primarily financial or white-collar crime. 

Blanche resigned from his position as partner at Cadwalader to join Trump's legal team in 2023, defending him against charges that Trump falsified business records to hide hush-money payments sent to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump named Blanche as his nominee for deputy attorney general in 2025. 

Maxwell's defense counsel 

As of this writing, Maxwell is represented by Florida-based attorney David Oscar Markus, per his law firm's website. Markus has also represented Maxwell in multiple media appearances.

Markus has represented Maxwell since 2021. Before Markus, Maxwell reportedly had a defense team of four lawyers. 

The New York Times reported that two of those lawyers, Jeffrey S. Pagliuca and Laura Menninger from Colorado-based Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, previously represented Maxwell in civil litigation. (Haddon, Morgan and Foreman accused Maxwell of failing to pay legal fees in a lawsuit filed in 2022.)  

The other two lawyers were Christian Everdell and Bobbi C. Sternheim, both based in New York. The Associated Press and other reputable news outlets similarly reported that Maxwell's defense team included the aforementioned lawyers. 

Sources: