Today, he’s Donald Trump’s man atop the Justice Department, the most powerful prosecutor in the entire nation, using every ounce of his power to bend the legal system to the White House’s will, and making priority of such legal urgencies asdoling out $1.8 billion in a compensation fundthat could go to the January 6 rioters. But not even five years ago,Todd Blanchewas taking on new clients, in Great Neck,Long Island, in the office of a local ophthalmologist.

The doctor, Idida Kaplan, was mother to a pair of baby-faced twin boychiks in their early 30s, Adam and Daniel. They had been working as financial advisers, but allegations of fraud were starting to mount. The Manhattan district attorney might even be sniffing around, they worried. They needed a good lawyer, preferably one for a good price.

Enter Blanche, a white-collardefense attorneywith New York City’s oldest law firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft. At Idida’s ophthalmology practice on Northern Boulevard, in a black-glass suburban office building, Blanche assured the Kaplans that they “would not be paying Cadwalader prices,” the Kaplans would later contend in a lawsuit against Blanche and his firm. “Blanche also advised the Kaplans that he did not want to make money on the representation, the implication being that while there would be some cost involved, it would be at a steep discount,” they added. (In a counterclaim, Caldwalader acknowledged it had said it would discount its rates, though not by how much.)

Fast-forward almost a year, to June 20, 2022. Cadwalader sent over its first bill—for $677,925.32. And that was just the start, according to the court papers. By November, the Kaplans had paid Blanche’s firm $1.65 million, and Cadwalader said they owed even more. On November 19, 2022, at 5:27 a.m., those court papers allege, Blanche emailed the Kaplans: “I am forced to instruct my team to stop work on this matter.” That bill needed to be paid.

Thus began a legal battle between the Kaplans and Blanche that dragged on and on and on—and continues to this day, even as Blanche now finds himself on the executive floor of theRobert F. KennedyDepartment of Justice Building in Washington, DC. Blanche may now be the acting attorney general of the United States of America—after nearly two years as Trump’s personal attorney and another as deputy AG—but he’s still contesting the lawsuit from his former clients from Great Neck. They’re accusing him of malpractice and forgery.

The Kaplan twins had an early brush with the American legal system while still in college. Their dad, Stewart, an allergist,sued the University of Rochester for $200,000when the boys weren’t given summa cum laude status, even though they had near-perfect GPAs, asThe New York Postreported in a story headlined “‘Flaw’ Degree.” The university reportedly adjusted the diplomas when it was informed of the discrepancy. Despite the alleged “mental anguish, psychological and emotional trauma,” according to thePost,Adam and Daniel managed to move ahead with their careers. By 2016, they’d landed jobs atMorgan Stanley.

The following year, according to the Kaplans’s suit against Blanche, they were the subject of an internal investigation at Morgan Stanley into allegations that they made unauthorized changes to client documents. The twins denied wrongdoing, lawyered up, then hired a legal malpractice specialist, Daniel Abrams, to sue the Kaplans’ own attorneys, whom they allegedly refused to pay. (The Kaplans lost on summary judgment, and the suit was eventually settled.)

The brothers continued to bounce around the finance world, passing through Merrill Lynch for a spell, then an outfit called IHT Wealth Management. They picked up clients along the way, many of them family friends and neighbors, some of them quite old and infirm.

“Client F wrote four checks payable to Daniel Kaplan, which Daniel was to use for home repair projects for Client F’s elderly mother,” reads a March 2023 complaint from the Securities and Exchange Commission; except Daniel allegedly “changed the amounts written on the checks and kept the proceeds.” The Kaplans had claimed to at least one client they got their MBAs from Harvard, according to federal investigators; they in fact took some classes at the extension program. In a separate civil case, another client complained that the twins forged their signatures on documents. (A judge sided with the Kaplans, ordered their client to pay them $245, and dismissed the case last year.) More seriously, the SEC complaint alleged that the Kaplan brothers skimmed about half a million dollars in extra fees from some of their clients and, through various schemes, drained another $4.5 million from the accounts of others. Adam, for his part, allegedly withdrew $156,000 in unauthorized wires from “Client E’s line of credit account,” including “$58,000 to a high-end watch retailer,” “$30,000 to a match-making service,” and $68,000 to a luxury accessories dealer, apparently for aHermès Kelly II mini bubblegum ostrich handbag with palladium hardware. (One of Adam’s criminal defense lawyers later told the jury that as long as they paid back what they borrowed, it “didn’t matter” what the twins “did with the money. They could use it to pay expenses. They could use it to fix their roof. They could use it to buy handbags.”)

But even as the federal government accused the brothers of being grifters, they presented themselves in state court as victims—of the Cadwalader firm and of Todd Blanche, who had by April of 2023 started his own practice and wasrepresenting a certain former reality show hostin his many legal affairs.

Source: Drudge Report