The (Overwhelming) Case Against Todd Blanche
The Senate's ultimate character test.
Trump TACOs on Hormuz Strait tolls, but doubles-down on ICE traffic stops after yet another killing. Because the brutality is the point.
“The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done,” Trump said of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in a social media post on Wednesday morning. “We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”
On Tuesday, Trump also had to pay E. Jean Carroll $5.6 million he owed her after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s and then defaming her. We also learned that the US Mint is striking a new $1 gold Trump Coin “to honor the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism. Featuring President Trump, it celebrates the strength of American values…”
Happy Wednesday.
The Appalling Mr. Blanche
Amidst the usual flood of news and outrage, the main event today will be Todd Blanche, who goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee trailing clouds of corruption, weaponized political prosecutions, fawning loyalty to the president, $1.8 billion slush funds, conflicts of interest, corrupt bargains, the Epstein cover-up, election denialism, violations of constitutional rights and court orders, a steaming pile of ethical violations, and a Department of Justice in ruins.
My apologies for the length of today’s newsletter, but the case against the deeply deplorable Blanche is vast and worth laying out in some detail.
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Just last week, a federal judge excoriated Blanche’s DOJ for its corrupt bargain creating a massive Goon Squad Slush Fund and immunizing Trump from IRS enforcement actions… forever. The judge’s decision came after more than 100 former judges filed a disciplinary complaint against Blanche, alleging he committed fraud on the court regarding the IRS settlement and abused his power.
[Judge Kathleen Williams] also barred the Justice Department, IRS and Mr. Trump from citing or using provisions of a deal the two sides reached in judicial, administrative, regulatory or other proceedings as evidence of a settlement in the case.
The case, Williams wrote, “was brought for an improper purpose — to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.” Additionally, the president and his two older sons, who were plaintiffs alongside Mr. Trump, “acted in bad faith,” she concluded.
Williams also directed a copy of her order to be mailed to the State Bar of New York and to the District of Columbia Bar, of which acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward are members, respectively. Blanche and Woodward signed documents relating to the settlement with Mr. Trump.
The Attorney General is supposed to be the nation’s top legal official, but he has been rebuked by federal courts for “willful and bad faith” conduct, specifically in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported and then vindictively prosecuted.
Blanche also violated Department of Justice ethics standards by failing to recuse himself from matters involving Trump, despite a signed pledge to do so. And he may have benefited financially by ending investigations into the crypto industry while holding substantial personal investments in that sector.
And then there is the Epstein cover-up, including his sweet deal with Epstein confederate Ghislaine Maxwell. You’ll recall that his former boss, Pam Bondi, told lawmakers behind closed-doors after her ouster that Blanche was the department’s point person on the release of the Epstein documents.
But those issues are merely subsets of Blanche’s deeper corruption and his slavish loyalty to his client-in chief. The NYT tallies up Blanche’s dangerous record:
He pursued nakedly political indictments, including against James Comey, the former F.B.I. director. Mr. Blanche helped design a proposed $1.8 billion fund to benefit the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and other Trump loyalists. He has spread falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election.
He signed an agreement that gives the Trump family and its businesses immunity from tax audits, which could save Mr. Trump $100 million or more. Mr. Blanche has pushed out dozens of F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors for doing their duty by investigating the riot and other potential crimes. He has violated his promise to recuse himself from matters in which he has a conflict of interest.
How bad is Blanche? More than 1200 former DOJ employees signed a letter opposing his nomination.
“In the coming weeks, many will rightly underscore the corruption and abuses that have defined the Justice Department under Todd Blanche’s leadership: the vindictive prosecutions and investigations of the President’s foes; the deals designed to reward lawbreakers with taxpayer dollars; the erasure of accountability for January 6; the mishandling of the Epstein files; and the denigration of judges and repeated violations of their orders,” the former employees wrote in a letter organized by Justice Connection, a DOJ alumni group.
“But we want to focus on an area that deserves just as much attention: Todd Blanche’s degradation of DOJ’s apolitical career workforce.”
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Under Blanche’s leadership, approximately 16,000 employees have left, and departures aren’t slowing down. They include FBI agents and analysts in field offices across the country, and more than a quarter of the department’s attorneys.
Blanche has fired or overseen the firings of hundreds of these employees – usually without notice, and for improper, unlawful reasons. Some were terminated for having worked on cases the President didn’t like; for being relatives of the President’s foes; for adjudicating immigration cases in accordance with due process; for declining to initiate vindictive prosecutions; or for refusing to lie in court. These terminations violate the very civil service statutes designed to prevent corruption and political purges.
The New York City Bar also sounded warnings that Blanche’s record “conclusively demonstrates his lack of commitment to the integrity, professionalism and independence that the Senate should require and the American people should expect of the highest law enforcement official in the land.”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington also denounced the appointment:
As acting attorney general and deputy attorney general, Blanche has repeatedly elevated the president’s interests over the DOJ’s and the American people’s. His record includes defending the settlement of Trump’s IRS lawsuit against his own administration, celebrating the firings of career DOJ employees assigned to cases against Trump, misusing DOJ power to investigate and indict Trump’s political enemies and working to purge the convictions of January 6 insurrectionists.
Writing in Executive Functions, Bob Bauer highlighted Blanche’s role in propping up Trump’s Big Lie:
Blanche has endorsed the president’s claim of a fraud-ridden electoral process. In a Fox News interview two months ago, he echoed Trump’s long-running insistence that the 2020 election was “rigged.” He cited without more detail “a ton of evidence” that somehow eluded the many courts that rejected Trump’s legal challenges and the election law experts who have independently evaluated these allegations. Blanche suggested that this “ton” of evidence has been accessible for “many, many years” but also stated that it has been hard to get at because the perpetrators of this fraud “[are] very good at hiding misconduct.”
Senate Democrats have demanded answers to a host of questions that Blanche has, so far, failed to answer. They are legion. (See footnote)1
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Exit take: Senators may have buyer’s remorse over their votes to confirm chode like Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, RFK, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard. But this vote will be the ultimate test of whether the Senate still takes seriously its power of advice and consent. It will also be a decisive test of the character of the handful of senators who claim to have rediscovered their consciences and their independence.
Wednesday dogs
Eli could spend all day in the lake, especially when the temps are in the 90s.
Just a taste of questions that Senate Democrats want Blanche to answer:
The Senators cite the following outstanding requests with no response:
January 29, 2025 Letter Requesting Access to Volume II of Special Counsel Smith’s Report
February 3, 2025 Letters Regarding Purges of Senior Career Civil Servants Across DOJ and FBI
February 4, 2025 Letter Regarding Reassignment of Assistant U.S. Attorneys to Immigration Enforcement
February 20, 2025 Letter Regarding Replacement of Career Ethics Officials With Inexperience Political Appointees
February 26, 2025 Letter Regarding Compliance with the CLOUD Act
March 3, 2025 Letter Regarding Termination and Redirection of National Security Career Civil Servants Toward Immigration Enforcement
March 20, 2025 Letter Regarding Shuttering of DOJ’s Public Integrity Section
March 21, 2025 Letter Regarding Trump Administration Reduction and Termination of BOP Retention Incentives
March 26, 2025 Letter Regarding Baseless Termination of Pardon Attorney
March 31, 2025 Letter Regarding Blanche’s Confirmation Hearing Testimony
April 1, 2025 Letter Regarding DOJ’s Position on Scope of January 6 Pardons Covering Unrelated, Subsequent Criminal Conduct
April 1, 2025 Letter Regarding DOJ’s Role in President Trump’s Baseless Assertion that President Biden’s Pardons Are Void
April 18, 2025 Letter Regarding U.S. Marshal Visit to Former Pardon Attorney Oyer
April 30, 2025 Letter Regarding DOJ Grant Terminations
May 2, 2025 Letter Regarding then-Attorney General Bondi’s Lobbying Private Prison Contractor Conflicts of Interest
May 8, 2025 Letter Regarding Change to Department Guidance on Subpoenaing Information About Confidential Sources from Journalists
May 21, 2025 Record Preservation Request Regarding Pattern and Practice Investigations
June 9, 2025 Letter Regarding Detention of SEIU President Huerta
June 12, 2025 Letter Regarding Ed Martin’s Abuses at DOJ
June 12, 2025 Letter Regarding BIA Decision to Weaken Legal Protections for DACA
June 19, 2025 Letter Requesting Information Regarding Alleged Misconduct by Emil Bove in United States v. Nejad
July 14, 2025 Letter Regarding Weaponization of Immigration Court Hearings to Trap and Arrest Immigrants
July 16, 2025 Letter Regarding Termination of Director of DOJ’s Departmental Ethics Office
July 16, 2025 Letter Regarding then-DAAG Bove’s Role in Epstein Files Review
July 23, 2025 Letter Regarding DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility’s Investigation into Emil Bove’s Alleged Misconduct in United States v. Nejad
July 28, 2025 Letter Regarding Arrangement of Ghislaine Maxwell Interview and Review of Epstein Files
August 7, 2025 Letter Regarding Transfer of Ghislaine Maxwell to Minimum-Security Prison
September 3, 2025 Letter Regarding Hiring Jared Wise, Convicted January 6 Law Enforcement Assaulter, as a Senior Adviser at DOJ
September 3, 2025 Letter Regarding Deployment of National Guard to Chicago
September 4, 2025 Letter Regarding Partisan Terminations of Career Civil Servants
September 5, 2025 Letter Regarding Politicization of DOJ’s Antitrust Division
September 15, 2025 Letter Regarding Diminished National Security Expertise and Capacity Due to Terminations and Reassignments
September 23, 2025 Questions for the Record Following the September 16, 2025 Hearing Concerning Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with Director Patel
September 23, 2025 Letter Regarding Termination of Tom Homan Corruption Investigation
September 30, 2025 Letter Regarding Use of JAG Officers as DOJ Immigration Judges
September 30, 2025 Follow-up Letter Regarding Restitution Payments for Convicted January 6 Insurrectionists
October 14, 2025 Questions for the Record Following the October 7, 2025 Hearing Concerning Oversight of the Department of Justice with then-Attorney General Bondi
October 29, 2025 Letter Regarding President Trump’s $230 Million Taxpayer Funded Settlement Requests
October 29, 2025 Letter Regarding Unlawfulness of President Trump’s Military Strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific
October 30, 2025 Letter Regarding Partisan Deployment of Election Monitors
November 6, 2025 Letter Regarding DOJ’s Voter Roll Requests to States
November 19, 2025 Letter Regarding Partisan Terminations of FBI Agents and Intervention of U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of the District of Columbia
December 9, 2025 Letter Regarding DOJ and FBI Weaponization Against Members of Congress for Constitutionally Protected Speech Reiterating Federal Law
January 22, 2026 Letter Regarding Killing of Renée Good
January 26, 2026 Letter Regarding Creation of Second Amendment Section within DOJ’s Civil Rights Division
January 28, 2026 Letter Regarding Blanche Cryptocurrency Conflicts
January 29, 2026 Follow-up Letter on DOJ’s Voter Roll Requests to States
February 9, 2026 Record Preservation Request Regarding Investigations of Senators Kelly and Slotkin’s Constitutionally Protected Speech Reiterating Federal Law
February 25, 2026 Request for Investigation into Decision to Block Use of Force Investigation in January 7 Killing of Renée Good
February 26, 2026 Record Preservation Request Regarding Review, Redaction, and Production of Epstein Files under theEpstein Files Transparency Act and Earlier Reviews
March 9, 2026 Record Preservation Request Regarding Allegations Against President Trump within Epstein Files and Missing FBI 302 Interview Memorializations
March 16, 2026 Letter Regarding OCDETF Operation Trip Knot’s Uncovering of Financial Links to Jeffrey Epstein
March 16, 2026 Letter Regarding DOJ’s NPRM on Interfering with State Bar Disciplinary Processes
March 16, 2026 Criminal Referral Regarding Former Secretary Noem’s Perjury Before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees
April 13, 2026 Letter Regarding Former Attorney General Bondi’s Departure
April 15, 2026 Letter Regarding Halbank Deferred Prosecution Agreement
April 20, 2026 Records Preservation Request Regarding Incidents FBI Director Patel’s Impairment and Absences on the Job
April 26, 2026 Letter Regarding Status of Investigation into then-Federal Reserve Chair Powell
May 11, 2026 Letter Regarding BOP Policies Concerning Transgender Inmates
May 18, 2026 Letter Regarding Blanche Recusal Issues
May 26, 2026 Letter Regarding Purported Anti-Weaponization Fund
The Senators cite the following outstanding requests with only partial or insufficient response:
February 28, 2025 Letter Regarding Shuttering of Task Force KleptoCapture
March 11, 2025 Letter Regarding Investigation of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund
March 17, 2025 Letter Regarding DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force
March 26, 2025 Letter Regarding Baseless Termination of Pardon Attorney
March 28, 2025 Letter Regarding Termination of Immigration Judges at Executive Office
of Immigration Review
April 10, 2025 Letter Regarding Cryptocurrency Enforcement
May 15, 2025 Letter Requesting then-Attorney General Bondi’s Legal Memorandum Concluding President Trump’s Receipt of $400 Million Qatari Jet Was “Legally Permissible”
July 1, 2025 Letter Regarding Emil Bove’s Direction to DOJ Officials to Mislead Courts
July 17, 2025 Letter Regarding Baseless Voter Fraud Investigations
July 18, 2025 Letter Regarding July 7 DOJ/FBI Memo on Jeffrey Epstein Files and Death by Suicide
July 28, 2025 Letter Regarding Blanche’s Interview of Ghislaine Maxwell
September 15, 2025 Letter Regarding Attempt to Unlawfully Remove Unaccompanied Children
September 26, 2025 Letter Regarding U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and Attempted Prosecution of Former FBI Director Comey
February 13, 2026 Letter Regarding Removal of Assistant Attorney General for DOJ’s Antitrust Division Slater
A year of paid level of To the Contrary: Less than $75.
A box of popcorn: $4.
Reading Charlie Sykes' Friday summary of Trump's upcoming Thursday drone-A-thon, so I don't have to hear it: Priceless.
Awesome Charlie , the sheer volume of the corruption and malfeasance leaves me almost speechless . A million times worse than John Mitchell .