Todd Blanche Should Not Be Attorney General
His record is disqualifying
Today the Senate Judiciary Committee begins confirmation hearings on Trump’s nomination of Todd Blanche to be Attorney General of the United States. It’s safe to say there has never been a nominee for that position who has so robustly and publicly demonstrated that he is unfit for the job. During his time in Trump’s Justice Department, first as Deputy Attorney General and more recently as acting Attorney General, Blanche has demonstrated that his loyalty and devotion are not to the rule of law, but to Donald Trump.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
In a recent post I wrote about some of Blanche’s abuses as acting Attorney General. Events since then have further highlighted his willingness to wield the power of the Justice Department to benefit Trump and his political allies. At the time, I wrote that Blanche appeared to be actively auditioning for the permanent gig. Well, his audition was successful. Now only the Republican-controlled Senate stands between us and the supremely unqualified Blanche taking over at the Justice Department.
Given the Senate’s track record with Trump’s nominees, this is not a situation that fills one with hope. But confirming Blanche would be a travesty. He should not be Attorney General.
The Ruling in the “Slush Fund” Case
Just this week, a federal judge sharply criticized Blanche’s involvement in one of the more brazen corruption schemes to come out of this Justice Department. You will recall how Trump and his sons sued his own Internal Revenue Service over the improper release of their tax returns, seeking billions of dollars in alleged damages. The Trump tax returns were among those unlawfully released by an IRS contractor during Trump’s first term.
To have jurisdiction, federal courts require that there be a “case or controversy,” a real dispute between different parties with adverse interests. The judge in Trump’s case, Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida, questioned whether that requirement was met because Trump and his own administration officials were present on both sides of the case. (Trump himself helpfully flagged this issue at one point, saying “I’m suing myself.”) Williams asked the parties for briefs on that issue so she could decide whether the case could proceed.
Instead, just before the briefs were due, the government voluntarily dismissed the case, claiming the parties had reached a “settlement.” That “settlement” included the establishment of a $1.776 billion fund to pay alleged victims of “weaponization” by the Biden Justice Department – including those who stormed the Capitol and assaulted police officers on January 6. The “settlement” also granted Trump, his sons, and his businesses immunity from any tax prosecutions or IRS audits.
Todd Blanche, as acting Attorney General, signed off on both aspects of this scheme. Under fire from both political parties, he was later forced to state that the weaponization fund would not be implemented. But he refused to put that in writing or under oath, and did not back down from the grants of IRS immunity to Trump and his family.
In May, a group of thirty-five former federal judges urged Judge Williams to re-open the case to determine whether a fraud had been committed against the court by the dismissal and supposed “settlement.” Judge Williams agreed to do so, and this week she issued her ruling.
“No Viable Basis in Law or Fact”
In a remarkable 56-page opinion, Judge Williams found that the parties and attorneys in the case, including Blanche, had engaged in misconduct that justified judicial sanctions. She concluded that the lawsuit and supposed “settlement” were a sham and an abuse of the court’s authority:
This action was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute. The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.
The lawsuit was a sham, she concluded, because Trump controlled both sides of the case. He was the plaintiff, but as president he also had complete authority over the defendants, the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department. She pointed out that the Trump administration had recently prevailed in the Supreme Court in a case holding that Trump has unfettered authority to control and fire Executive Branch officials. She held the government could not argue that it has such authority before the Supreme Court and at the same time argue that there were real adverse parties in the case before her.
Williams also pointed out that others whose tax returns had been leaked had also sued, and that the Justice Department had vigorously and successfully defended those lawsuits. IRS attorneys had prepared a 25-page memo on the flaws in Trump’s claims and the defenses that could be raised. But in this case alone, those defenses were abandoned.
Judge Williams concluded that the abuse of the court’s authority was so clear and intentional that sanctions were justified:
And because this fact was so obvious and so insurmountable, the Court finds that this matter was brought for an improper purpose—to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a “settlement” that had no viable basis in law or fact. As was observed in another matter brought in this District, “this case is part of Mr. Trump’s pattern of misusing the courts to serve political purposes.” Trump v. Clinton, 653 F. Supp. 3d 1198, 1219 (S.D. Fla. 2023).
The judge ordered that Trump’s attorneys be referred to the Florida bar for potential discipline; directed that a copy of her order be sent to the D.C. and New York bars where Todd Blanche is admitted (and where he is already the subject of a disciplinary complaint related to this proceeding); and imposed monetary sanctions. Her order also barred the Trump plaintiffs, the IRS, and the Treasury Department from referring to the purported “settlement agreement” or relying upon it in any way in any kind of official proceeding.
A federal judge has thus officially found what was already obvious: that while Blanche was in charge at DOJ he signed off on a bogus “settlement” agreement with Trump’s own administration to use taxpayer dollars to pay off Trump’s supporters and allies and to immunize the president and his family from any future tax investigations. In any normal government with a sense of official responsibility – not to mention a sense of shame – this ruling alone would be enough to sink Blanche’s nomination.
The Whitewashing of January 6
Last week a federal judge granted a motion by Blanche’s DOJ to dismiss the criminal cases against five members of the far-right group the Proud Boys. The defendants had been convicted at trial of some of the most serious crimes involving the January 6 assault on the Capitol and had been sentenced to hefty prison terms. After his re-election Trump commuted the sentences of most of the Proud Boys but did not grant them full pardons; instead the Justice Department stopped defending the appeals of their convictions and moved to dismiss the underlying cases “in the interests of justice.”
Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee who presided over the Proud Boys trials, reluctantly concluded that he had no choice but to grant the dismissals. Whether to continue the prosecutions was within the sole discretion of the Executive branch, and a judge cannot force prosecutors to pursue a case. He noted, however, that “no one should mistake the Court’s granting of the Government’s motion for its agreement with those decisions.” He went on:
As the Court has said many times, the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a perilous event. It was an attack on people, including police officers, many of whom were injured. It was an attack on a coordinate branch of government—Congress—that the Founders saw fit to give a place of primacy in Article I of the Constitution. And it was an attack on the Constitution’s mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next, what President Reagan called “nothing less than a miracle.” President Ronald W. Reagan, Inaugural Address (Jan. 20, 1981). Moving forward, if this Nation’s experiment in self-government is to last another 250 years, the American people—no matter their partisan preferences—will have to act together to preserve, protect and defend that miracle through our constitutional framework.
The dismissal of the Proud Boys cases is just the latest step in the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite the history of January 6 by suggesting that the Capitol rioters were patriots and innocent victims of a weaponized Justice Department. Those efforts have included Trump’s pardons, on his first day in office, of almost all January 6 defendants. They also included the Justice Department’s purge of prosecutors and FBI agents who were involved in the January 6 prosecutions.
Todd Blanche has presided over all of these efforts. Members of Congress should grill him on his willingness to whitewash history and bend the law to benefit those who attacked our democracy on January 6, 2021.
Prosecuting Trump’s Enemies
Blanche has shown an eagerness to use the power of the criminal justice system to pursue Trump’s political enemies and further his political goals. This is one of the administration’s most egregious violations of the rule of law, which dictates that prosecutions must be based on the facts and law free from political influence. As we’ve noted many times here on Sidebars, it is only under Trump — and on Blanche’s watch — that the true “weaponization” of the Justice Department has taken place.
Shortly after taking over as acting Attorney General, Blanche spearheaded the ridiculous prosecution of former FBI director James Comey for supposedly threatening the president with a seashell formation on the beach. He appointed MAGA fixture and former Trump campaign attorney Joe DiGenova to lead a criminal investigation into the delusional “grand conspiracy” that claims various Democratic officials have been involved in a shadowy decade-long criminal effort to target Trump. These efforts followed earlier failed political prosecutions of Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
But the investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s political foes are only one aspect of the abuse of the justice system for Trump’s political benefit. Blanche has also shown a willingness to use criminal prosecutions to bolster political propaganda coming out of the White House.
Consider the reflecting pool debacle: Trump awarded a no-bid contract to a political ally to renovate the pool. Shortly after the work was completed it became clogged with algae and the blue paint began peeling off the bottom. An embarrassed Trump claimed, with no evidence, that “vandals” had caused the damage, when the real cause appears to be shoddy workmanship. Blanche’s Justice Department then sprang into action to bolster Trump’s lies by arresting a former Olympic athlete and three other individuals and charging them with damaging the pool. The evidence suggests they merely picked up pieces of the paint that was already peeling off the bottom.
Break doors and windows at the Capitol, assault police officers, defecate in the hallways, and you’re a patriot who deserves a pardon. But pick up a piece of peeling paint in the reflecting pool and you’ll be prosecuted. That’s the Justice Department under Trump and Todd Blanche.
The Epstein Files
When former Attorney General Pam Bondi left office, she said her deputy Todd Blanche had been in charge of producing the Epstein files as mandated by Congress. That production has been a disaster. The Justice Department has yet to produce many of the documents required by the law, although it did manage to publicly and improperly disclose the names of many of Epstein’s victims.
Recently journalist Katie Phang filed a lawsuit seeking to compel the Justice Department to release additional Epstein files it has withheld. They include notes from several FBI interviews of a young girl who claimed Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1980s, and the names of the co-defendants in a draft indictment of Epstein that DOJ redacted. A federal judge recently ruled Blanche had effectively conceded DOJ had violated the Epstein disclosure act by failing to respond to Phang’s allegations, and gave the Justice Department a week to remedy the violations. The Justice Department also missed that deadline and has asked for additional time while it considers an appeal.
Congress passed a law requiring disclosure of the Epstein files and Blanche has overseen the blatant failure of the Justice Department to comply with that law. You would think Senators might be concerned about that.
Unfit for Office
In normal political times, a nominee with Blanche’s track record would be doomed before he ever reached the hearing room. A Senate that cared about the rule of law, or about an administration that repeatedly thumbs its nose at Congress’s own authority, would reject this nomination.
This is the Senate that confirmed grossly unqualified officials such as Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard. It’s hard to have much hope that Republicans will suddenly develop a spine and defy Trump’s wishes. But if Senate Republicans want to start putting some distance between themselves and Trump as the midterm elections approach, this would be a great place to start. Blanche has demonstrated he has no business being Attorney General.