Blanche Refuses to Say He’ll Always Be Independent of Trump as Attorney General
New York Times · LC · trust 44/100
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The new head of the Justice Department said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the president had never asked him to prosecute specific people — and never would.
Listen · 4:53 min Share full article Attorney General Todd Blanche has said President Trump has never asked him to do something illegal. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times By Glenn Thrush
Mr. Blanche, displaying a greater ease in fielding a variety of pointed questions than his predecessor, Pam Bondi, sought to balance his loyalty to the president and a commitment to the evenhanded administration of justice during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“There’s a big difference between saying we will always do our job and investigate any case, and act independently of the White House,” Mr. Blanche said when pressed to pledge his independence by the show’s host, Kristen Welker.
“No, I’m not going to pledge that, and no attorney general should ever pledge that,” he said.
But he suggested in another interview that he was not afraid to push back. “It’s my job to talk to him about those issues, which I have done for many years and I will continue to do,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Mr. Blanche told NBC that Mr. Trump had never asked him to do anything illegal or unethical — and claimed that reports of White House meddling in the department were overhyped.
“There is this extraordinarily false narrative that the president wakes up in the morning and calls me and says, ‘Todd, go prosecute X or Y,’” Mr. Blanche said. “He does not do that. He has never done that. He will never do that.”
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