All About Todd Blanche

"At best misleading; at worst disingenuous." A new Main Justice episode.

We are doing something different this week: the entire episode is devoted to a discussion of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and why he should not be confirmed in our view as Attorney General.

Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing is set to begin today, Wednesday, so we use this episode to look at the totality of his tenure at the helm of the Justice Department, detailing example after example of how — despite his role as a chief lawyer for the United States — he is still functioning as the de facto personal lawyer for the president. Here is a man who has been repeatedly found by federal judges to have engaged in improper— indeed, illegal — conduct. Yet, here he is being put up to be the head of the Justice Department.

We start things off by dissecting a deeply consequential and searing opinion this week from District Judge Kathleen Williams over Trump’s “sham” IRS lawsuit. The quote in the subtitle above, is from the court’s decision, in reference to her assessment of Blanche’s congressional testimony. The court effectively finds, in Mary’s telling, that the court case “was collusion. It was the president being on both sides of that case, and it's no adversity between the parties.” We discuss the court’s reasoning and the sanctions imposed against the lawyers involved —included Blanche.

You can read the court decision HERE. And my short MS NOW Instagram post about this scathing decision is HERE.

Then, we take a broader gaze into what Blanche has done in leading DOJ: his handling of the Epstein files and Ghislane Maxwell, the ongoing investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s political enemies, and how he has used the DOJ as the president’s personal law firm - without recusing himself as he should have.

We discuss the Justice Department’s recent actions with Blanche at the helm, including an example from the past week of the ongoing “assault on journalists”: subpoenaing New York Times journalists who wrote about the jet gifted to the US by the Qatari government.

Finally, we end by posing the one question we each would ask Blanche at his hearing. My MS NOW Instagram post on another question I would ask is HERE. (If you like my Instagram posts, please follow me there— a link to do so is HERE.)

Stay engaged, now more than ever.

Andrew