Request for investigation and preservation of evidence concerning the appearance of the Deputy Attorney General of the United States at the Conservative Political Action Conference
September 14, 2026
Hatch Act Unit
U.S. Office of Special Counsel
1730 M Street, N.W., Suite 218
Washington, D.C. 20036
Re: Request for investigation and preservation of evidence concerning the appearance of the Deputy Attorney General of the United States at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 26, 2026, and his statements there concerning election administration and Department charging activity
To Whom It May Concern:
The Steady State is an organization of more than 430 former national security, intelligence, diplomatic, military, law enforcement, and homeland security officials who served across administrations of both parties. Its members have devoted their careers to safeguarding the integrity of United States government institutions, including the Department of Justice and the Office to which this complaint is addressed.
I write to file a complaint under the Hatch Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 7321–7326, and to request that the Office of Special Counsel investigate whether Todd Blanche, then the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, used his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election when he appeared under his official title at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 26, 2026, and there endorsed a partisan characterization of American election administration, described the Department of Justice’s own election-related charging activity by comparison to a predecessor administration, and proposed the deployment of federal immigration officers to polling places. I also request that the Office direct the preservation of records bearing on the appearance, including any records reflecting who authorized it, how it was arranged, and whether any cost associated with it was borne by the Treasury.
Disclosure of a related filing
In candor to the Office: The Steady State filed a separate Hatch Act complaint with this Office, dated September 3, 2026 and submitted September 4, 2026 concerning Mr. Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, arising from an August 14, 2026 event at the Nassau County Police Academy in Garden City, New York. That complaint concerns different conduct, on a different date, and reaches Mr. Blanche in a different office. The offices should be kept distinct: Mr. Blanche was the Deputy Attorney General on March 26, 2026; he was named Acting Attorney General on or about April 2, 2026, following the removal of Attorney General Pamela Bondi; and he was confirmed as Attorney General on August 8, 2026 and sworn in on August 10, 2026. This complaint concerns his conduct as Deputy Attorney General. The two matters are factually independent, and this complaint does not ask the Office to treat them as a course of conduct. It is disclosed so that the Office is aware of the earlier filing and can consolidate or separate the matters as it sees fit.
The appearance
On March 3, 2026, CPAC announced Mr. Blanche as a confirmed speaker for CPAC USA 2026 in a post on its own website titled “Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to Join CPAC USA 2026,” describing him as “the 40th Deputy Attorney General of the United States, a role he assumed in January 2025 to oversee the daily operations of the Department of Justice and its various agencies, including the FBI and DEA.” The conference was held March 25–28, 2026 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas.
Mr. Blanche appeared on the CPAC main stage on Thursday, March 26, 2026, in a recorded interview with Matt Schlapp, the chairman of CPAC, that runs approximately twenty-five minutes. The recording establishes the following without inference:
• The conference’s own stage display is visible in a wide view in Mr. Schlapp’s recording. It carried the session title “THE JUSTICE LEAGUE” above the names of the two participants; the smaller type beneath each name is legible in outline only. The broadcast separately identified him on screen as “TODD BLANCHE | DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES | @DAGTODDBLANCHE,” and the interviewer as “MATT SCHLAPP | CHAIRMAN, CPAC | @MSCHLAPP”; those graphics are the broadcaster’s and are offered only as corroboration of how the appearance was presented.
• A clock displayed in the broadcast is consistent with a mid-to-late morning appearance, local time, on a Thursday. That clock is the broadcaster’s and is offered as corroboration only. • Mr. Blanche stated that “we were able to settle with with General Flynn yesterday.” The Department’s settlement of Michael Flynn’s lawsuit was reported on March 25, 2026, which independently fixes the date of the appearance.
Separately, at 7:05 p.m. Eastern Time on the evening of the appearance, Mr. Schlapp posted publicly that “@DAGToddBlanche joined me on stage at CPAC to discuss restoring integrity to our justice system,” tagging an account whose handle is constructed from the office Mr. Blanche then held.
The Steady State has preserved two recordings of the interview and will provide either to the Office on request. The first was published by the interviewer: Mr. Schlapp posted his own copy on April 2, 2026 — 1,280 × 720, H.264, 186,844,931 bytes, running twenty-five minutes and forty-three seconds; SHA-256 5079ae06fd8628283e9293b7beed1adcadb225cf3dcb5f05ed7e78cc7c35d180. The second is a capture of the Right Side Broadcasting Network livestream of the conference — 1,920 × 1,080, H.264, 750,493,290 bytes, running twenty-five minutes and six seconds; SHA-256 038ae03fe56b70f89d288cc8701fb4a2402871c285a9bd6bd637916153681c83. No official transcript of the appearance has been published, and published renderings of these remarks differ among outlets. The passages quoted below were machine-transcribed and then checked by ear against the audio; disfluencies are reproduced rather than smoothed, and no words are omitted within any quoted passage. CNN reported the appearance the same day, describing it as a fireside chat at CPAC and quoting Mr. Blanche from it; CNN’s rendering of the passage it quoted matches the recordings preserved here.
The appearance is also catalogued in the public record by C-SPAN, which lists it under the program title “Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche Speaks at CPAC Conference in Grapevine, Texas,” dated March 26, 2026 and running twenty-five minutes and forty-nine seconds, and describes the segment as covering “topics including alleged past weaponization of the Justice Department by Democrats, immigration, voter registration.” That copy is publicly available and may be obtained by the Office directly. It is offered as an independent record of the date and subject matter of the appearance, and not as Mr. Blanche’s own use of his title.
What the Deputy Attorney General said
The passage1 at the center of this complaint is a single continuous exchange. Mr. Schlapp had been speaking about American voting arrangements; Mr. Blanche responded, and then moved directly to a proposal about polling places:
MR. SCHLAPP: “Why the hell do you vote like that? Nobody votes—”
MR. BLANCHE: “Yeah.”
MR. SCHLAPP: “—in this crazy way that we’ve allowed the left to set up in America.”
MR. BLANCHE: “I mean, you’re preaching President Trump’s agenda right there, and it’s — and it’s right.”
MR. SCHLAPP: “Well, he’s the one who gave you that question.”
MR. BLANCHE: “Amen, I like that, let’s go. Yeah, election integrity should be the most nonpartisan issue we have. Like, why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places? Illegals can’t vote. It doesn’t make any sense. Why, why is there —”
1 The quotations set out are transcribed by The Steady State from a recording of the March 26, 2026 interview. The interview was published in full by Mr. Schlapp from his verified account on April 2, 2026. The Steady State has separately preserved a livestream recording of the same interview carried by Right Side Broadcasting Network, and the on-screen identifications and broadcast clock described above are taken from that recording.
MR. SCHLAPP: “Well, they they can vote. They just shouldn’t vote, right?”
MR. BLANCHE: “Uh well, that’s amen, that’s right. I mean, listen, why, you, what what is the objection? You you all probably had to show your ID five times since you came into this place.”
The Office should note what this exchange is and is not. It is not an endorsement of election integrity in the abstract. What Mr. Blanche called “President Trump’s agenda,” and pronounced “right,” was a characterization of how Americans vote as an arrangement “we’ve allowed the left to set up.” The Deputy Attorney General of the United States adopted a partisan characterization of election administration and, in the same exchange, proposed sending federal immigration officers to polling places.
Moments later, still on the same subject, Mr. Blanche described the Department’s own charging activity. Mr. Blanche said: “That’s not necessarily completely my purview, except that we’re charging and indicting, um, illegals who voted” in election-fraud cases. He continued that the Department had charged “20 times more than was charged under Biden in one year,” and that “we’re gonna keep on doing that.”
Mr. Blanche recited a quantitative comparison of the Department’s charging activity while discussing his official responsibilities. The public record does not show the source, scope, time period or method of that comparison. Whether the comparison he drew is supported by the Department’s own records is a question this Office can answer and the public cannot, and The Steady State asks that it be answered. The Department’s own public announcements in this area report individual prosecutions; they state no national total and no comparison to any prior administration. The contemporaneous basis for the number recited on March 26 is therefore a question for the Department’s own files. The basis for a charging figure recited from a partisan stage bears directly on whether the Deputy Attorney General was describing the Department’s work or invoking his office to make a partisan point.
And, in the same answer:
“[W]e are fighting a judiciary, and we’re fighting in blue states that don’t want this, and that say no. And you can ask yourself why, but I think the answer is, is obvious, and so it’s gonna be a fight we continue.”
Those statements drew directly upon Mr. Blanche’s official authority: he invoked his jurisdiction, described Department charging decisions and enforcement statistics, and spoke prospectively about the Department’s continued use of that authority. He did so from the stage of a partisan political conference.
The Steady State does not rest on the reference to “blue states” as such. As the Office has advised, a reference to a political party in the course of discussing government policy does not, without more, constitute political activity. What matters here is the setting in which the reference was made: while invoking the Department’s own enforcement authority, in an exchange about voting and polling places.
Other statements in the same interview bear on purpose. Mr. Blanche told the audience that the first change at the Department was theirs: “It’s what everybody in this room did. We re-elected the president, right? That was the change.” He described a fear that “the next administration, if if we don’t win, we’re going to all be investigated and indicted.” He credited the audience with “sending President Trump back to office” and told them “you all have to continue to do your part too.” He volunteered that he is not a Democrat and “haven’t been.” And he described “getting conservative judges” as “without a doubt a priority of of Dave Warrington, our White House counsel, the president, and and everybody in this administration.”
What this complaint does not allege
The Steady State states plainly what the record does not contain. Mr. Blanche did not name a candidate for any 2026 election. He did not expressly identify the 2026 midterm elections. Express advocacy, however, is not what the statute requires. Nothing in the recording of these remarks constitutes a political contribution, and the Steady State makes no allegation under 5 U.S.C. § 7323(a)(2) on this record. Whether Mr. Blanche has solicited political contributions on any other occasions is a matter which The Steady State has no knowledge and on which it takes no position. Nothing in the record establishes that he was introduced by anyone as speaking on behalf of a party or candidate. The Office should evaluate this complaint on the theory actually presented — the use of official authority and official title — and not on a theory the facts do not support.
Public record and responses to date
The March 26 statement did not pass unnoticed, and it did not remain rhetorical. It was reported at the time by Democracy Docket and by The Hill; published renderings of the remark vary between outlets, and the language quoted in this complaint is transcribed from the recording itself. In July 2026, as Acting Attorney General, Mr. Blanche was asked to rule out armed federal agents at polling places and would commit only to “following the law … no matter what it includes.” Axios reported that exchange against his earlier CPAC remark. Twelve United States Senators then sought the underlying deployment records and quoted the CPAC remark in a letter dated July 28, 2026. Those later events do not prove Mr. Blanche’s purpose on March 26. They are why preservation should reach any Department or interagency record that treats the CPAC statement as contemplated policy rather than rhetoric.
As to prior filings, two complaints concerning Mr. Blanche have been submitted to this Office, and both concern the same August 14, 2026 Long Island event in support of a candidate for Governor of New York: a complaint filed by Public Citizen on August 18, 2026, and The Steady State’s own complaint dated September 3, 2026 and submitted September 4, 2026, described above. Neither concerns the CPAC appearance. The Steady State is aware of no complaint filed with this Office by any person concerning the conduct described here.
Questions warranting examination
The appearance raises at least six questions requiring prompt examination.
1. Investigators should determine whether the March 26 appearance was “political activity” within the meaning of 5 C.F.R. § 734.101 — that is, activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group. 2. If it was, investigators should determine whether Mr. Blanche used his official title while participating in that activity, which 5 C.F.R. § 734.302(b)(1) identifies as a manner of using official authority under § 734.302(a). Title use is one instance of the conduct § 7323(a)(1) prohibits, not its definition.
3. Investigators should determine whether, separately, that appearance and the statements described above constituted the use of official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election, within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. § 7323(a)(1) and 5 C.F.R. § 734.302(a).
4. Investigators should determine who arranged and authorized the appearance; whether any Department of Justice component participated in scheduling, preparing, staffing, or publicizing it; and whether any Department employee prepared remarks or briefing materials for it. 5. Investigators should determine whether any nonexcluded cost associated with the appearance — travel, lodging, per diem, communications support, or the allocable share of mixed official and political travel — was paid from money derived from the Treasury of the United States and, if so, whether it was allocated and reimbursed as 5 C.F.R. § 734.503 requires and within a reasonable period. Mr. Blanche is a Senate-confirmed officer described in 5 U.S.C. § 7324(b)(2); for such an officer the on-duty prohibition at § 7324(a)(1) is conditional on that cost question, and the two should be examined together.
6. Investigators should determine whether the account identified on screen as @DAGTODDBLANCHE is an official account, who controls it, and whether it or any Department account was used to promote or publicize the appearance. CPAC’s chairman tagged that account publicly on the day of the appearance; whether it is a Department account, and who operates it, is not established on the public record. The handle displayed on March 26 no longer resolves. An account now operates as @AGToddBlanche under the display name “Attorney General Todd Blanche,” describing its holder as the “88th Attorney General,” listing Washington, D.C. and justice.gov, and reporting that it joined the platform in April 2025. Investigators should determine whether that is the same account, who has controlled it since March 2026, and whether the content published under the earlier handle has been preserved.
Potentially applicable law
Depending on the facts, the appearance may implicate several provisions of the Hatch Act and its implementing regulations.
Use of official authority or influence to affect an election
5 U.S.C. § 7323(a)(1) provides that an employee may not “use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” The implementing regulation,
5 C.F.R. § 734.302, repeats that prohibition at subsection (a) and provides at subsection (b)(1) that its scope includes “[u]sing his or her official title while participating in political activity.”
Mr. Blanche is an “employee” for these purposes. 5 U.S.C. § 7322(1) excludes only the President and the Vice President from the definition. The additional restriction at § 7323(b)(2)(A) does not reach him — that subparagraph excepts an employee “appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate” — but § 7323(a)(1) contains no such exception and applies to him in full. The implementing regulations say the same: 5 C.F.R. § 734.501 provides that employees appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate “are subject to the provisions of subparts B and C of this part,” and § 734.302 is in subpart C. That is the position The Steady State took in its September 4, 2026 complaint concerning the August 14, 2026 event, and it is the position it takes here.
The Office has stated the rule in a determination: an employee covered by § 7323(a)(1) “may not use his official title while engaging in political activity or his official position to advance or oppose candidates for partisan political office.” OSC File No. HA-18-2573 (May 1, 2018). Here the conference itself presented him under that title: in its own announcement of his appearance. The Steady State does not contend that a broadcaster’s on-screen graphic is itself Mr. Blanche’s use of his title.
The Office’s treatment of official policy communications marks the same line, and it drew that line three times in a single day. On September 5, 2024, the Office announced several Hatch Act enforcement decisions, three of them concerning senior officials. It found that Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro — like Mr. Blanche, an officer appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate — violated the Act by advocating for and against presidential candidates while appearing in his official capacity, and reported that violation to the President. It closed the matter concerning Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona’s letter to student-loan borrowers, observing that Secretary Cardona “does not refer to candidates, elections, or voting” even though the letter stated that “Republican elected officials” are “siding with special interests.” The Steady State discloses that the Office closed a third matter the same day, likewise without a violation finding: a referral concerning former Attorney General William Barr and the Department’s public statements about an election-fraud investigation. The Department’s statements in that matter named the candidate for whom the discarded ballots had been cast, and the Department’s own Inspector General later concluded that the United States Attorney’s statements violated Department policy, including its election-year sensitivities guidance; this Office nonetheless closed the referral without a violation finding. Both closures concerned communications issued through official channels. The Office issued an advisory opinion the same day addressing when official agency communications become political activity. It states that when an agency discusses topics such as pending legislation or government policy, “references to a political party, without more, typically do not constitute political activity under the Hatch Act,” and that a communication may cross the line where it “also references voting or an upcoming election and/or … contains advocacy in support of, or opposition to, the electoral prospects of a political party, partisan political group, or candidate for partisan political
office.” The Office cautioned that each such case “turns on the specific facts involved.” The Steady State does not contend that the advisory governs a conference appearance, which is not an official agency communication; it cites the advisory for the line the Office itself has drawn. Mr. Blanche’s remarks were delivered from a partisan conference stage: he spoke expressly of “win[ning],” credited the audience with having “re-elected the president,” urged them to “continue to do your part,” and did so in an extended exchange concerning voting and polling places.
CPAC is a partisan political group within the meaning of the regulations — the organization, not the event
“Political activity” is defined at 5 C.F.R. § 734.101 as “[a]n activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.” The same section defines “partisan political group” as:
“Any committee, club, or other organization which is affiliated with a political party or candidate for public office in a partisan election, or organized for a partisan purpose, or which engages in partisan political activity.”
The definition is disjunctive, and the Office states the same three-part test in its own Hatch Act FAQs. The organization that sponsors and operates CPAC — the American Conservative Union — satisfies it, and the clearest evidence comes from this conference. In its own published results, CPAC asked attendees to respond to the statement that “[h]elping Republicans maintain the majority in the House and Senate should be the most important political goal.” Ninety-three percent agreed. The same survey recorded attendees’ preferences in what CPAC itself described as the “2028 Republican primary election for President,” and asked whether they favored “[i]nvesting in the National Republican Party.” Federal Election Commission records also list an American Conservative Union independent-expenditure filer — which the Commission identifies as a filer rather than a committee (C90013236) — and an American Conservative Union Super PAC (C00505792), which reports no receipts or disbursements this cycle. The Steady State does not assert, on the basis of those filings alone, that either entity is the legal operator of the conference or is controlled by it. The organization has published ratings of members of Congress since 1971. CPAC USA 2026 itself conducted a straw poll of attendees on the next Republican nominee for President, reported by Reuters on March 28, 2026. In that poll about 53 percent of the more than 1,600 attendees who voted chose the Vice President, and Reuters described the conference as one that “draws heavily from the Republican Party’s conservative wing.” An organization that polls its attendees on a party’s presidential nomination engages in partisan political activity.
The program CPAC assembled for the same day bears on the same question. C-SPAN’s catalogue of the conference describes another speaker’s remarks that day as addressing, among other subjects, “the importance of supporting candidates in the midterm elections who align with President Trump’s agenda” The Steady State does not attribute those remarks to Mr. Blanche, who is not shown to have been present for them, and does not ask the Office to treat them as his. They bear
only on whether the organization that assembled the program engages in partisan political activity within the meaning of § 734.101.
The Steady State does not, however, rest this complaint on the character of the venue. Whether the organization satisfies § 734.101 bears on the circumstances in which Mr. Blanche spoke. The conduct this complaint asks the Office to examine is his own.
Political activity while on duty
5 U.S.C. § 7324(a) provides that an employee may not engage in political activity “while the employee is on duty.” Subsection (b)(1) permits an employee described in subsection (b)(2) to engage in activity otherwise prohibited by subsection (a) “if the costs associated with that political activity are not paid for by money derived from the Treasury of the United States.” Subsection (b)(2)(B)(ii) describes a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee “who determines policies to be pursued by the United States … in the nationwide administration of Federal laws.”
The exception is therefore conditional, and the condition is a question of fact this Office is positioned to resolve and the public is not. 5 C.F.R. § 734.503 excludes four categories of cost from the reimbursement requirement, including the employee’s own compensation, government-owned or leased real property, the compensation and expenses of employees required to accompany or assist, and special security arrangements. The Steady State does not contend that those excluded costs give rise to a violation. The question is whether any nonexcluded cost — including the allocable share of any mixed official and political travel — was borne by appropriated funds and, if so, whether it was reimbursed as the regulation requires.
Equal application of the Act
The Steady State asks that this matter receive the same standard the Office applies to other Senate-confirmed officers. In a report transmitted to the President on September 5, 2024, the Special Counsel found that the Secretary of the Navy — like Mr. Blanche, appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate — violated the Act by advocating for and against presidential candidates while appearing in his official capacity, and by using his official authority or influence for the purpose of affecting the result of an election. OSC File No. HA-24-000104. The same statutory prohibition is the one the Office enforces in ordinary-employee cases, including the settlements it announced on February 26, 2026 and the disciplinary complaints it announced on August 20, 2026. The Office has applied that prohibition to Senate-confirmed officials and to other federal employees alike, while the available disposition and statutory route vary with the employee’s status and the facts. This complaint asks only that the same standard be applied.
The Office has addressed a CPAC appearance before — and its prior decisions mark the line
This is not a novel setting for the Office. On May 1, 2018, in OSC File No. HA-18-2573, the Office concluded that Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O’Rielly violated the Hatch Act
through remarks made at CPAC on February 23, 2018, and issued him a warning letter. The Office’s own letter records that Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Brendan Carr participated on the same panel, that the panel was titled “To Infinity and Beyond: How the FCC is Paving the Way for Innovation,” and that the appearance “provided an opportunity to explain recent FCC decisions and the underlying thinking on issues of interest to the organization.” What distinguished Commissioner O’Rielly was what he said. Asked how to avoid policy reversals across election cycles, he answered that “what we can do is make sure as conservatives that we elect good people to both the House, the Senate, and make sure that President Trump gets reelected.” The Office concluded that he “advocated for the reelection of President Trump in his official capacity as FCC Commissioner” and therefore “violated the Hatch Act’s prohibition against using his official authority or influence to affect an election.” As to Chairman Pai, the Office is reported to have written separately that, “after considering all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the event,” he did not violate the Act “by merely participating in the panel discussion in an official capacity.” The Steady State has not obtained that letter and describes it as reported by The Daily Caller on May 18, 2018. Read together, the two outcomes distinguish official participation at this conference, which is permitted, from conduct within it that crosses into prohibited political activity.
The Steady State states candidly how this matter differs. In that case the official said, in terms, that conservatives should “make sure that President Trump gets reelected.” Mr. Blanche said nothing that explicit. This complaint does not depend on an express electoral appeal. Section 7323(a)(1) reaches the use of official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election, and the sequence described above is what distinguishes this appearance from Pai’s: Mr. Blanche spoke of what would follow “if we don’t win,” credited that audience with having “re-elected the president,” urged them to “continue to do your part,” and moved from there into an exchange about voting and polling places in which he described the Department’s own charging activity. Whether it was undertaken for the purpose the statute describes is the question this complaint asks the Office to answer.
Anticipated responses
The Steady State anticipates three responses and addresses them here rather than leaving them to be raised.
First, that Mr. Blanche appeared in an official capacity to discuss Department enforcement priorities, and that identification by his title was therefore accurate rather than prohibited. That is the Pai answer, and it is a good answer to a different case. The Office cleared Mr. Pai for “merely participating in the panel discussion in an official capacity.” This complaint does not concern mere participation. It concerns an official who, in the course of that participation, endorsed a partisan characterization of how Americans vote, spoke of what would follow “if we don’t win,” credited the audience with the last election, urged them to continue their part, and recited the Department’s charging record against a named predecessor administration. The Office closed the Barr referral with almost no published reasoning. The Steady State does not treat that closure as a rule that official speech about election-fraud enforcement is categorically safe; it discloses the closure because
it involved official statements about an election-fraud matter. The question is whether the setting of this appearance, and the sequence of statements within it, take these remarks out of that class.
Second, that the American Conservative Union is not a partisan political group. The Steady State discloses that in an April 16, 2018 letter to Representatives Pallone and Doyle, the General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission wrote that “even though 501(c)(4)s like ACU are permitted to participate in some political activity on behalf of or in opposition to candidates, they are not ‘partisan political group[s]’” where “political activity is not their primary activity,” and that “[t]he mere fact that the leadership or audience at an event may lean in one political direction does not transform an organization into a ‘partisan political group.’” Four things bear on the weight of that letter. It is the position of the Commission’s own counsel, taken in defense of the Commission’s own members, and this Office did not adopt it — it separately found that Commissioner O’Rielly violated the Act. It was written eight years before the conduct at issue and without the 2026 material set out above. Its “primary activity” qualifier appears nowhere in § 734.101, which is satisfied by an organization “which engages in partisan political activity.” And the proposition it rejects — that a conservative audience converts a panel into political activity — is not the proposition this complaint advances.
Third, that purpose cannot be inferred from policy disagreement. The Steady State agrees, and does not ask the Office to infer it from disagreement. The election at issue is the general election of November 3, 2026. The question is whether remarks delivered from that stage, by the official then supervising the Department’s election-related enforcement, were intended to lend the authority of that office to a contested position about how the coming election should be administered and policed. Whether the record ultimately supports that inference is for the Office to determine; The Steady State submits only that the circumstances warrant the inquiry.
The Steady State states the mechanism it asks the Office to examine rather than leaving it to implication: whether official endorsement of a federal law-enforcement presence at polling places was intended to affect who votes in that election, and so its result, rather than merely to describe an enforcement policy. Enforcement against ineligible voters is a Department function. A purpose inquiry is warranted only if the official endorsement of a federal immigration presence at the place of voting was directed at who appears to vote — including eligible voters — and so at the result, rather than only at who is legally entitled to a ballot. Section 7323(a)(1) reaches conduct directed at the result of an election, and affecting the administration of an election is not automatically the same thing. That is a distinction the Office should draw on a full record. The Steady State further acknowledges that the phrase “if we don’t win,” standing alone, does not identify which election Mr. Blanche had in mind, and does not ask the Office to resolve that ambiguity against him on the present record.
Sufficiency of the record
The present public record is sufficient to warrant an investigation. That Mr. Blanche was an employee subject to § 7323(a)(1); that he appeared at a partisan political conference under the title of
his office; and that he there described the Department’s election-related enforcement and proposed the deployment of federal immigration officers to polling places, are established by the recording, by the conference’s own announcement of his appearance, and by the sources set out above. What the public record does not resolve is the element of purpose. Section 7323(a)(1) reaches the use of official authority or influence “for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” Purpose may be inferred from conduct and from the circumstances of an appearance; whether it should be inferred here is the question this complaint puts to the Office. That question, and the separate question whether any nonexcluded cost was borne by the Treasury, should be resolved on a record that includes what the public cannot reach: the scheduling and authorization records, the internal communications preceding and following the appearance, any preparation materials, and the travel and cost records.
Requested action
I therefore respectfully request that the Office of Special Counsel promptly take the following actions.
Preservation. Issue preservation directives to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General and the Office of the Attorney General, the Department’s Office of Public Affairs, the designated agency ethics official, and any component that participated in the appearance, covering, for the period February 1 through April 15, 2026: communications with CPAC, the American Conservative Union, or any affiliated entity or representative of either; scheduling, authorization, calendar, and advance materials; any prepared remarks, talking points, or briefing materials; any request for or provision of ethics advice concerning the appearance; travel authorizations, vouchers, and reimbursement records; any photography or recording by Department personnel; and records associated with the account identified as @DAGTODDBLANCHE together with any other account operated by or on behalf of Mr. Blanche or any Department component that was used to arrange, promote, or publicize the appearance, including any such account since renamed. Without regard to that period, the directive should also reach any Department or interagency record treating the March 26 polling-place statement as contemplated policy.
Investigative determinations. Determine the matters set out in the six questions above.
Disposition and its statutory route. If the Office determines that disciplinary action is warranted against an employee appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, 5 U.S.C. § 1215(b) provides that the complaint and the Special Counsel’s supporting statement, together with any response of the employee, “shall be presented to the President for appropriate action in lieu of being presented” to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The Office’s authority to investigate is not conditioned on the identity of the employee: 5 U.S.C. § 1216 directs the Special Counsel to investigate allegations of political activity prohibited under subchapter III of chapter 73.
Written disposition. Advise The Steady State in writing of the disposition of this complaint and, if the Office declines to investigate or closes the matter, of the reasons for that determination.
Urgency
Particular urgency attaches to preservation. The appearance drew limited attention when it occurred; it became the subject of Senate oversight in July 2026, and it is that development, not the approach of the election, that prompts this complaint. The Steady State does not suggest that this Office can complete an investigation of a senior official’s purpose before the general election of November 3, 2026, and does not ask it to. What cannot wait is the record. The documents most likely to answer the purpose question — scheduling communications, advance materials, travel vouchers — may be subject to routine records-disposition schedules. A preservation directive issued now preserves the Office’s ability to answer the question later.
Conclusion
This complaint does not assert that any identified person has committed a crime and does not urge any particular disciplinary outcome. It asks the Office of Special Counsel to determine whether the Deputy Attorney General of the United States used the authority and the title of that office, at a partisan political conference on March 26, 2026, for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.
Please confirm receipt of this complaint and advise, to the extent permitted by law, whether it has been directed to the appropriate investigative components.
Respectfully submitted,
Steven A. Cash
Executive Director, The Steady State