Trump taps top Justice Dept. official to also head Library of Congress

President Donald Trump has chosen Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche - the No. 2 official at the Justice Department - to also serve as the acting head of the Library of Congress, according to a Justice official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Blanche would assume the acting role days after Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden nine years into her 10-year term.

The White House has not announced Blanche’s new role. Several Democratic members of Congress called Monday for more scrutiny of the White House’s interactions with the Library of Congress, while a lawyer who used to work with the agency said it could be problematic for the Justice Department to have visibility into communications between the library’s research arm and U.S. lawmakers.

Blanche would be the latest Trump administration official to hold dual titles in different agencies as the president ousts top officials across the government. The administration has not explained how these new leaders would split their time and lead multiple agencies with distinct mandates.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for example, has several temporary titles, including interim national security adviser, head of the largely dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development and acting national archivist. And Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll is also serving as the interim head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives - a role briefly held by FBI Director Kash Patel.

As head of the Library of Congress, Blanche would oversee thousands of employees and archives containing more than 178 million items, including rare books, medieval manuscripts and a perfect vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible.

He would also oversee the U.S. Copyright Office, which is part of the Library of Congress.

Trump ousted the head of the copyright office, Shira Perlmutter, on Saturday - days after Perlmutter released a 100-page-plus report on artificial intelligence that raised concerns about using copyrighted materials to train AI systems. The report was seen by some as undercutting Trump ally Elon Musk, who has called for fewer intellectual property laws.

It is unclear how Blanche would shape the Library of Congress as its temporary leader. Two officials from his office at the Justice Department showed up to the library on Monday morning as part of the transition to Blanche’s leadership, the Justice Department official familiar with the situation said. Those two people will also simultaneously hold jobs in the Justice Department and the Library of Congress, this person said.

As deputy attorney general, Blanche is involved in nearly every aspect of the Justice Department, running the day-to-day operations of the massive law enforcement agency and supervising and directing all its units.

Blanche was previously Trump’s personal defense attorney, representing the president in three of the four criminal indictments he faced after leaving the White House in 2021. Blanche left a prestigious private law firm to take on the Trump cases. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in New York.

The Library of Congress was founded in 1800 by the second U.S. president, John Adams, who sought to make what functions as a law library for U.S. lawmakers. The library’s Congressional Research Service serves as a nonpartisan think tank, providing research and analysis to members of Congress for national policymaking. And its Copyright Office reviews hundreds of thousands of applications each year, advises Congress on intellectual property issues and sets regulations across the country.

Daniel Schuman, a former attorney for the Congressional Research Service, said access to the library’s materials would include a view into communications between congressional offices and attorneys and researchers stretching back decades, including requests for legal advice on legislation not yet filed.

“You can’t have the executive branch seeing the advice that Congress is getting from its own staff,” said Schuman, who now directs the nonprofit American Governance Institute.

Robert Randolph Newlen - who became acting head of the Library of Congress after Hayden’s dismissal - wrote two notes to staffers Monday saying he was waiting to hear from Congress about the next steps in the leadership transition.

“You may have read that the White House has named a new acting Librarian,” Newlen wrote, according to a copy of one note obtained by The Washington Post. “Currently Congress is engaged with the White House, and we have not yet received direction from the White House on how to move forward. We will share additional information as we receive it.”

Hayden was the first woman and first African American to lead the world’s largest library. She was not given a reason for her termination, The Post reported last week. But the White House said it was related to diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

“There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday.

Six Democratic members of Congress signed a letter to the Library of Congress’s inspector general on Monday calling for an investigation into whether the White House has had inappropriate communications with Library of Congress staff members, including the “unauthorized transfer of congressional or Library data to executive branch agencies and personnel.”

“The abrupt firing of Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden raises serious concerns that the executive branch is improperly targeting the Library and its employees with adverse employment actions and inappropriate requests for information including, but not limited to, confidential communications between congressional offices and the Library’s various service units,” said the letter, which was written by Rep. Joseph Morelle (D-New York), a member of the House Administration Committee.

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Sophia Nguyen and Paul Kane contributed to this report.