President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general clashed with Democrat senators Wednesday while also facing potentially decisive questions from a key Republican.
As reported on Thursday’s AM Update, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended his leadership of the Department of Justice (DOJ) during a largely contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.
His nomination now faces an exceptionally narrow path through the committee after Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) sudden death over the weekend left Republicans with just one vote to lose assuming every Democrat opposes the nomination as expected.
Among Blanche’s sharper exchanges was a clash with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) over his attendance at a dinner hosted by Paramount CEO David Ellison. Booker noted the dinner took place the same day Paramount shareholders approved a merger still under DOJ review and pressed Blanche on whether his attendance crossed ethical lines.
BOOKER: The Justice Department ethics rules are very clear about avoiding the appearance of impropriety. In a case like this, I don’t think that’s appearance of impropriety. I think that’s improper. That the connected and the powerful are getting a chance to rub shoulders, it would seem appropriate that you avoid those kind of appearances and dinners like that.
BLANCHE: Every appearance or dinner or speech that I give are cleared by ethics officials.
BOOKER: So, your attendance at that dinner was cleared by ethics officials?
BLANCHE: Everything that I do–
BOOKER: I didn’t ask you everything you do. Was your appearance at that dinner–
BLANCHE: You can ask the questions, but you cannot control my answers. I’m under oath, and I can answer the questions how I choose to answer them.
Blanche delivered another forceful response after Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) launched a series of personal attacks against FBI Director Kash Patel:
WHITEHOUSE: How long do you intend to put up with that Kash Patel character? Are you good with his airplane jaunts? Are you confident he’s not drinking on the job? Are you sure none of his travel is pretext for vacation activities like visiting girlfriends? Are you sure he knows what he’s doing? Are you willing to look at whether he lied to this committee?
BLANCHE: That is an extraordinarily obnoxious question, senator, and I have full faith in Director Patel and the work he’s doing every day.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) too the questioning in an especially personal direction despite he himself being censured by the House of Representatives and blocked from returning to the Intelligence Committee over his conduct during the Trump-Russia investigations and now facing allegations of mortgage fraud that he denies.
SCHIFF: What happened to the prosecutor who said that there wouldn’t be a whiff of political partisanship and then prosecutes the president’s enemies over seashells cases, over making a video stating the plain law and constitution? … What happened to you, Todd Blanche? … It is a sad story that we have seen from Trump appointee after appointee after appointee. We have seen people compromise themselves little by little, and then a lot by a lot, until they’re sitting before this committee and trying to justify the unjustifiable.
BLANCHE: You asked me what happened to Todd Blanche? I am still here. I am the same exact person I was when I was a federal prosecutor in the [Southern District of New York], which is do the right thing and do everything you can to keep the community safe. So when I was a line prosecutor, when I was a supervisor, when I was the head of a division, my motivation and my goal was the same thing with the people who worked with me and worked for me, which is do the right thing, enforce the laws, and put bad guys in jail.
Blanche, who was President Trump’s personal attorney before joining the administration, confirmed during Sen. Schiff’s questioning that he has recused himself from any remaining DOJ work connected to the three now-concluded criminal cases against the president – the New York business-records prosecution, the January 6 investigation, and the classified-documents case at Mar-a-Lago.
The hearing took a potentially more consequential turn with questions from Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who lost his reelection bid to Republican primary challenger Ken Paxton and is now the pivotal undecided vote on Blanche’s nomination.
Sen. Cornyn pressing Blanche over the now-abandoned Anti-Weaponization Fund, a nearly $1.8 billion pool created through the settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit over the leaking of his tax records intended to compensate people who claimed they had been unfairly targeted by the justice system.
The proposal drew bipartisan resistance over concerns it could steer taxpayer money to political allies through a process controlled by the administration, and Cornyn probed whether the Trump White House had fully closed the door on the fund.
CORNYN: First of all, I believe you have said that the weaponization fund is a moot issue. Is that your position?
BLANCHE: Yes, it is a moot issue, meaning there is no weaponization fund. The weaponization fund is dead. It’s not moving forward … I’ve talked extensively with you and and other colleagues about potentially codifying, so there’s no weaponization fund, which is certainly something that could be done…
CORNYN: But just to be clear, the president of the United States, who was the plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the weaponization fund, and there’s no guarantee that he or one of the other plaintiffs might raise that issue by way of a lawsuit and a breach of contract lawsuit in the future?
BLANCHE: Well, senator, the plaintiffs have no power over the fund. The fund was administered solely by the five commissioners and through the Department of Justice. So no, they don’t have any power with respect to the fund at all, I suppose they could bring a lawsuit, and then we would litigate it. But even if we were litigating it, there’s no fund.
Sen. Cornyn declined to say which way he is leaning after the hearing, telling reporters he does not have to make a decision yet but added he thought Blanche did a “pretty good job.”
Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) also expressed concerns about whether the fund had been permanently eliminated. Though he initially signaled he is leaning toward supporting Blanche, he announced Thursday he will not vote to confirm him until he meets with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse.
Blanche said during Wednesday’s hearing that he was “prohibited from meeting directly with” survivors but has met with many of their attorneys. “If they are represented by counsel, we will work with their counsel. If they don’t have a lawyer, I will certainly make arrangements to make sure the right people at the Department of Justice meet with them,” he said.
Blanche faced a second day of hearings Thursday, and it remains unclear when a committee vote to advance his nomination will take place following Tillis’ ultimatum.
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