|
 |
My proofreader is out for a couple of days, and we have a lot of ground to cover tonight, so I’ll apologize in advance for anything I missed in my review. Mea Culpa.
This week, Trump’s pick to be his second Attorney General for this term in office, his former criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche, faces a confirmation hearing in the Senate. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 9:00 am on Wednesday and is expected to last for two days, including outside witnesses. Blanche will need a majority of the votes from Senators who are present to get the job.
 |
Blanche has refused Trump virtually nothing. He supports the effort Trump launched on day one of his second term in office to erase the insurrection. It began with the pardons of Rudy Giuliani and the fake slates of electors. As Ed Martin put it, “No MAGA left behind.” It went on to include virtually everyone who was present at or involved with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, including those charged with insurrection. It has only gone downhill from there.
Before Blanche gets a floor vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee must vote to advance his nomination to the full Senate. The Judiciary Committee is chaired by Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley. Dick Durbin is the ranking Democratic member.
The Committee consists of 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. With Lindsay Graham’s death over the weekend, there are 11 Republicans. They include John Cornyn, who lost his Texas primary to Ken Paxton, and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, who is retiring. Neither of them has said they won’t vote to advance Blanche’s nomination.
In fact, after a mid-June meeting with Blanche, Cornyn spoke favorably about him, although he declined to commit, saying he wanted to hear more about Blanche’s role in Trump’s slush fund debacle. Ahead of the meeting, Cornyn told reporters he was “interested in hearing how he [Blanche] would approach the job, because he was President Trump’s lawyer at one time, but if he’s AG, he won’t be the president’s lawyer.”
All of that, of course, is utter nonsense. We know precisely how Blanche will approach the job because he’s been doing it since Trump forced Pam Bondi out. And he’s been doing it in an unprecedented and deeply disturbing way. Cornyn, a lawyer who served as both a justice on the Texas Supreme Court and the Attorney General of Texas before going to the Senate, has all the information he needs in front of him to reach the only responsible conclusion: Blanche should not be confirmed.
That applies to others on the committee as well. Only Thom Tillis and Marsha Blackburn are not lawyers. The others all took an oath to uphold the law when they became members of their respective state bars. Barring some sudden change, it looks like Blanche will have the bare majority required, an 11-10 vote, to advance out of committee. If one senator becomes disenchanted with Blanche, leading to a tie, Republicans could try to appoint a replacement for Lindsay Graham, but that could become complicated, even subject to a filibuster. That was the kind of conundrum Democrats faced when they contemplated replacing Diane Feinstein.
Senate Rule XXVI stipulates, “The vote of any Committee to report a measure or matter shall require the concurrence of a majority of the Committee who are present.” That low bar, a simple majority of present members, is one Blanche will likely clear. But even if the nomination fails to advance out of the Committee, the Senate Majority Leader could get around that by filing a discharge motion to put Blanche’s nomination before the full Senate, if Republicans still wanted to bring it up for a vote. That path involves complications and delay too, and Republicans will undoubtedly hope for a clean vote out of Committee and a clean vote on the floor of the Senate to get Blanche confirmed.
That might seem like the preordained outcome, but the vote will be closer with Graham’s death and a statement by Mitch McConnell that he is recovering but not yet ready to return to work. McConnell said on Sunday that he fell in mid-June and was left unconscious. He said he developed pneumonia while hospitalized and is currently in rehab, working on “strategies to reduce his risk of future falls.”
If McConnell hasn’t returned by the time the full Senate votes, the balance in the Senate will stand at 51 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats. That would be enough to give Blanche the simple majority he needs for confirmation if Republicans vote on or close to a straight party line.
But the fact that is the likely outcome here is shocking, even if it’s unsurprising. Blanche is a deeply flawed candidate, perhaps the most deeply flawed to come before the Senate in modern times. Republicans held Eric Holder in contempt after he turned over a voluminous quantity of documents, but not everything, in connection with a criminal investigation called Fast and Furious. Unlike with the Epstein files, there was no law passed by Congress requiring turnover of all documents and DOJ explained why it had complied with Congress’ request. That didn’t satisfy Republicans who held Holder in contempt, but would now ignore Blanche’s failure to comply with a law they passed just recently.
The most serious signs Blanche shouldn’t be confirmed include:
Under Blanche’s acting leadership, the DOJ signed off on Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund—taxpayer money he could use to reward January 6 defendants and other supporters—before lawsuits forced him to walk it back. And still worse was the “settlement agreement” Blanche personally signed off on, which would let (it’s currently tied up in multiple lawsuits) Trump, his family, and his businesses walk away from unpaid tax liability and avoid any further investigation.
 |
Dropping the prosecution of additional Epstein co-conspirators. A series of 2019 emails between DOJ prosecutors working on the case, released by the Justice Department, revealed that 10 unnamed “co-conspirators” of Epstein and Maxwell were under investigation. None of them were ever charged. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN there was no evidence in the Epstein Files that supported additional charges. That flies in the face of what is publicly understood about the extent of Epstein’s network of people who supported his trafficking and abuse of girls and women. It’s a broken promise to Epstein survivors, before we even get to the failed release of the files, which Blanche oversaw. The release was incomplete, with clear withholding of key material. And it protected perpetrators and predators while disclosing information and even photos of some of the survivors. Blanche personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, failed to push her on obvious discrepancies, and appears to have participated in her transfer to a prison where she receives highly favorable treatment after she made favorable statements about Donald Trump. The Attorney General’s job is to protect victims, not a convicted sex trafficker, but that’s what Blanche did. And now there’s news that DOJ is involved in shutting down a New Mexico state investigation into Epstein’s ranch.
Blanche, after testifying at his first confirmation hearing that he wouldn’t let politics hold sway at DOJ proceeded to execute Trump’s revenge agenda, overseeing indictments of cases like the two against Jim Comey and the ongoing investigation in the Southern District of Florida into the president’s political enemies, like former CIA Director John Brennan. Blanche seems incapable of telling Trump no, as the recent prosecution of a former Olympian who put his hands into the Reflecting Pool demonstrates.
Blanche failed to pursue investigation into the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and has remained silent as ICE v