A former federal prosecutor, Trump hailed Blanche as an “excellent attorney” and said he had tasked him with “fixing what has been a broken System of Justice for far too long”.
Other nominations announced on Thursday include:
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Dean John Sauer, who represented Trump in a US Supreme Court case earlier this year, as solicitor general. He will be charged with supervising and conducting government litigation in the Supreme Court.
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Jay Clayton, former chairperson of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as US attorney for the Southern District of New York, one of the most influential federal trial courts.
Trump also said in a statement he was “thrilled to announce” Kennedy’s nomination.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health”, he said.
“Mr Kennedy will restore these Agencies [Health and Human Services] to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
The nominee hails from one of the most famous families in Democratic politics as the son of US Attorney General Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated in the 1960s.
Now aged 70, the environmental lawyer ran for president this year as an independent after initially launching a Democratic primary bid, but he eventually suspended his own campaign, endorsing Trump.
He is known for his criticism of childhood vaccines, claiming in an interview last year: “I do believe that autism comes from vaccines.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, external, America’s national public health agency which is one of the bodies the US health secretary oversees: “Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and ASD [autism spectrum disorder]. To date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD.”
Kennedy, who was addicted to heroin for 14 years in his youth, has also talked about wanting to help tackle America’s substance abuse crisis.
‘We’re now seeing an epidemic of addiction, alcoholism,” he told the Daily Mail last year, external. “But also just loneliness, despair, disassociation, alienation.”
During his campaign for the White House, tales of Kennedy’s personal life more often caught the news than any major policy proposals. His admission that he had suffered from a brain worm, and a separate story about his dumping of a dead bear in New York’s Central Park, dominated headlines for days.
Trump has been selecting his top team since winning the US election last week. His party is projected to win the House of Representatives, meaning the Republicans will run the White House and all of Congress.
Marco Rubio has been nominated for secretary of state and former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. But his decision to nominate controversial Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill.
Long an outspoken ally of Trump’s, Gaetz was the subject of an ongoing ethics investigation in the House of Representatives into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and misuse of campaign funds.
Senator Dick Durbin, the sitting chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked for the findings of the report into the allegations to be published.
He is also divisive figure within his party after he forced out ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Senate Republican, said Gaetz was not “a serious nomination for the attorney general”.