‘I’m his lawyer’ — acting Attorney General briefly forgets he’s supposed to represent Americans
Fortune · C · trust 49/100
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confronted skeptical questioning at a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday about the creation of a fund to compensate President Donald Trump’s allies and a tax immunity deal for the president as he aimed to lock down the Republican support needed to advance his nomination.
Blanche insisted that the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which was scrapped after fierce bipartisan backlash, was “not moving forward.” But lawmakers, including Republican Sen. John Cornyn, conveyed concerns that the Trump administration has yet to commit in writing that the fund is dead and could therefore conceivably be resurrected.
“Just to be clear, the president of the United States, who’s a plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ and there’s no guarantee that he won’t raise it in the future?” Cornyn asked. Blanche replied that Trump has no power over the fund, which was to have been administered by the Justice Department but never launched.
Cornyn’s questions were closely watched since Blanche requires the backing of all Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and the Texas senator has not committed his support.
The hearing arrived at a tumultuous time for the Justice Department, with mass firings and resignations hollowing out the workforce and Democrats and other critics raising alarms that Blanche is still functioning as the president’s personal lawyer. He has led the department on an interim basis since April, functioning as the public face of the maligned and later-withdrawn fund and accelerating investigations into perceived Trump adversaries.
Even as he said the fund had been shelved, he made clear that immunity from tax audits afforded to Trump this year remained in place.
Those actions, plus the flawed release of files from the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking investigation , received fresh scrutiny Wednesday.
“You’re in charge of a Department of Justice I don’t recognize, prosecuting the president’s political enemies, firing rank and file prosecutors and FBI agents,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told Blanche. “These are some actions that in your previous confirmation hearing before us, you said you would not take.”
Blanche, for his part, insisted he has presided over a course correction following Justice Department investigations into Trump during the Biden administration.
“In recent years, we watched the Justice Department turned against many of you and a former president, and it damaged the public’s faith in justice,” Blanche argued. “We are fixing that.”
Key to Blanche’s confirmation are Cornyn of Texas, who in May lost his primary , and Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who has opted not to seek reelection. Entering the final stretches of their Senate career, both are seen as more likely than before to split from Trump and both have been outspoken critics of the fund the Trump administration created to compensate people who feel unjustly persecuted by the criminal justice system.
After questioning Blanche about the fund, Cornyn told CNN he continues “to have some concerns” and is not “going to make any decisions at this point.” Tillis, meanwhile, indicated during questioning that he is likely to support Blanche, even as he said he wanted “to stick a fork in this turkey of a 1776 fund.”
The death of South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham , who was a member of the committee, level 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats on the panel. A no-vote by even a single Republican on the committee could scuttle his nomination.
The fund emerged from a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over his leaked tax returns. Blanche had initially defended the initiative only to later reveal that it was being scrapped following fierce bipartisan backlash.
The judge who presided over the case said in a scathing ruling Monday that Trump and his lawyers had manipulated the court system through the lawsuit and subsequent settlement and said she was troubled Blanche had signed the settlement given his prior representation of Trump and was concerned he had given misleading testimony. Blanche said Wednesday that he disagreed “with the judge’s insinuations about me.”
Blanche also defended a separate element of the settlement that afforded Trump and members of his family protection from tax audits and that, he has said, remains on track despite outrage over it even from Republicans. Blanche said the deal covers any existing audits but does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.
“Nobody is above the law,” Blanche said. Such a settlement “doesn’t make any of those individuals above the law.”
Blanche was also pressed on the department’s staggered release of the Epstein files, a process beset by problems , including redaction errors that left exposed nude photos showing the faces of potential victims. Some names, email addresses and other identifying information were either unredacted or not fully obscured.
Blanche acknowledged that “mistakes were made” but said that only about 1% of the records had redactions that needed to be fixed, he said.
“I want to make sure that the American people know that this administration, when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, has been more transparent than any administration,” he said, although the Justice Department only released additional files after Trump bowed to bipartisan pressure to sign a law forcing the department to do so.
A former federal prosecutor and key member of Trump’s defense team as the Republican battled four indictments, Blanche arrived at the Justice Department last year as deputy attorney general. At one point, under friendly questioning from Republican Sen. John Kennedy about whether he and Trump are friends, Blanche responded: “I’m his lawyer,” before quickly correcting himself to say he “was his lawyer.”
He ascended to the top job in April after Trump ousted Bondi, who had…
Read the original at Fortune →
Open in TruthVane →