Will the real Todd Blanche please stand up?
Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney is trying to convince a panel of skeptical lawmakers that his past work as a critical legal weapon against Trump’s mountain of litigation is behind him as he tries to make the case that he should be the country’s top law enforcement officer. He went before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday to make his case for the job as the nation’s Attorney General.
Blanche has tried to put distance between his past role as Trump’s personal lawyer and his work at the Department of Justice, where he has played a key role targeting the president’s enemies and declared himself at “war” with “activist judges.”
Democrats aren’t convinced, and neither are a handful of Republicans who have serious doubts about the loyalties of a man who is willing to hand millions of taxpayer dollars to his former client’s aggrieved allies while protecting him and his family from IRS investigations.
That so-called “slush fund” is “not moving forward,” according to Blanche. But he hasn’t rescinded an order creating it, and neither has Trump. Blanche admitted the president’s lawyers could also try to enforce the creation of a fund.
Blanche is defending his memo granting the president and his family sweeping immunity from tax investigations, but he says he doesn’t know who wrote it. Blanche pledges to “absolutely follow the law no matter what it includes” but he says he won’t question Trump’s authority.
In April, Blanche said the release of millions of documents stemming from investigations into Jeffrey Epstein “should not be a part of anything going forward” at the Justice Department. On Wednesday, he said “there are no closed investigations” and admitted “mistakes were made.”
Blanche agreed to recuse himself from legal battles involving the president after he joined the administration. But he doesn’t believe dismissing cases against the Proud Boys for participating in a riot fueled by his former client’s election lies is a conflict of interest. And neither is the Justice Department’s decision to block a report on an investigation into Trump’s withholding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in a case that Blanche battled in court as the president’s personal attorney.
Last month, Blanche said he would still tell the president “I love you, sir” if he was passed over for the top job at the Justice Department. Now he says he can’t necessarily call him a friend.
“I’m his lawyer,” Blanche said Wednesday before quickly correcting himself. “Was his lawyer.”
“I’m not sure there’s many people who ever had a criminal defense attorney who calls that person their friend,” he said. “We’re not enemies at all.”
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker pointedly told Blanche that his confirmation hearing “is more of a performance review” after working inside the Justice Department for more than a year.
“You’ve failed,” he said. “You’re asking this body for a promotion. … We don’t need your promises. We have your record.”
After nearly five hours of testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff asked him: “What happened to you, Todd Blanche?”
“Someone who sacrificed everything you believed in for that title,” Schiff said. “I’ve 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 insists he hasn’t changed since he first starting working as a federal prosecutor nearly 20 years ago.
“You asked me what happened to Todd Blanche. I am still here. I am still the same exact person I was when I was at [the Southern District of New York], which is ‘do the right thing and try to keep communities safe.’”
Two days before Blanche’s testimony, a federal judge sanctioned Trump’s legal team after finding that the president filed a dubious lawsuit against his own IRS for the sole purpose of forcing a settlement that bailed out Trump and his family from tax investigations.
“This action was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute,” Florida District Judge Kathleen Williams wrote in a stinging rebuke of the deal on Monday.
In exchange for Trump dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against his own administration, a so-called “settlement” deal brokered by Trump’s Justice Department created a nearly $1.8 billion fund to pay his allies — and protected the president from IRS investigations.
Judge Kathleen Williams wrote that she was troubled by Blanche’s involvement.
“I very much disagree with the judge’s insinuations about me, and we’re going to do what we can to make that right,” Blanche said Wednesday.
He later said “someone had to” sign off on the deal.
“Someone had to sign that document when the president sued,” he said. “I tried to do the right thing.”
Blanche can’t afford any Republican dissent that blocks him from advancing to the Senate for a full vote.
