WASHINGTON, June 3 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he believed he would make acting Attorney General Todd Blanche permanent as the top U.S. law enforcement officer.
"He's a very talented guy. Todd's doing a very good job at DOJ," Trump said in an interview with "Pod Force One" broadcast on Wednesday.
Asked if Blanche would be the next U.S. Attorney General, Trump said, "I think he will."
Trump said he was happy with the pace of what the Department of Justice was doing, "much more so now
than at the beginning."
The Department of Justice under Blanche, who took over in early April after Trump fired his predecessor, Pam Bondi, secured criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, ramped up its investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and removed press releases about prosecutions of rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump defended his proposal to have a $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization' fund for his supporters. The fund sparked swift legal challenges and political uproar, including from Senate Republicans, who expressed anger that people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, could receive taxpayer-funded payouts. Critics condemned it as a slush fund.
"These are people that have been decimated," he said. "There's never been anything like this, what happened to those people, and these were many great people. And I gave them pardons. I'm very proud to have given them pardons, and I think they should be (reimbursed) for a crooked government."
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Kanjyik Ghosh in Barcelona; Editing by Louise Heavens and Chizu Nomiyama )
