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Todd Blanche was Donald Trump’s personal attorney, so it was natural that when he was elevated to attorney general, a journalist asked whether he would “pledge that the Justice Department will always act independently of the White House?”
The correct answer to such a question is obvious: The Justice Department and I are committed to the impartial administration of justice. We will always make prosecution decisions based solely upon the facts and the law after a fair evaluation of the evidence.
But Blanche said something a little different:
“No, I’m not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that. The president, I mean, if I were to pledge I will be independent of the White House, what that means is that if President Trump says, ‘I want the Department of Justice to go after every violent criminal in this country,’ which is what he has said, what you’re saying to me is I should say, ‘No, sir, I’m not going to do it.'”
The substance of Blanche’s justification is fatuous. Pledging to act independently of the White House doesn’t mean acting in every instance in direct opposition to the president. Nor could the president order the attorney general to “go after every violent criminal in this country,” since more than 98% of violent crimes are state offenses, not federal ones, and in any case the combined forces of the state and federal governments don’t have the resources to go after every violent criminal.
So much for deflection. The coffee-spitting moment came later, when Blanche was asked whether he would carry out an order that “crossed a legal or ethical line” and he proclaimed, “The president will never ask me to do something unethical or legal — or illegal. He never has. He never will.”
Let’s let the Freudian slip pass, but in fact the president had demanded that the Justice Department do something unethical that very week — namely, reconsider the decision to drop spurious vandalism charges against David Hearn. Jeanine Pirro’s own motion to the court acknowledged that the original indictment was based upon false information provided by the Department of the Interior. Nevertheless, Trump fumed that Pirro had “choked.” This week, we learned that she was convening a special grand jury for some unknown purpose. If I were Hearn, I’d keep my lawyer close.
Trump’s apologists do have a valid point when they note that the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Trump in the Stormy Daniels case was also a form of lawfare. I said at the time that the case was flimsy and almost certainly would never have been brought if Trump were not the target.
At the federal level, Attorney General Merrick Garland was actually extremely reluctant to pursue federal charges against Trump despite the gravity of his conduct before and on Jan. 6. It was only after Trump announced his reelection bid that Garland felt compelled to appoint a special prosecutor (precisely to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest).
Joe Biden made poor decisions in pardoning his family at the end, but that was trivial compared with the mass pardons for the Jan. 6 criminals, the pardons for cronies, donors, other corrupt public figures, the firings of any official who participated in the Jan. 6 or Mar-a-Lago investigations, the kid-glove treatment for Ghislaine Maxwell, and of course, the putrid attempt to create a $1.7 billion slush fund for so-called victims of lawfare along with a get-out-of-jail-free card for Trump and his insatiable family regarding past tax evasion.
The aptly named Blanche (because he should, but doesn’t, blush) was along for all of it. He personally visited Maxwell in prison and has yet to provide an explanation for that highly unusual visit, nor for her promotion to a more comfortable prison. He was at the Department of Justice as 3,400 lawyers resigned in protest rather than engage in the kinds of unethical and unprofessional conduct Pam Bondi and Blanche were demanding.
This ethical flexibility was enough to make even some Republican senators hesitate about confirming him. But in the end, all but Collins and Murkowski voted yes, presumably because they fear that if it’s not Blanche it will be someone even worse. Thus does Trump extort his party — by threatening to get even dirtier. But this tactic only succeeds because of learned helplessness by Republican office holders. In fact, when Trump gets pushback, he backs down. Ask Iran. Or consider the first utterly horrific attorney general candidate he proposed, Matt Gaetz. Enough Republicans balked that Trump withdrew his name.
It seems the tactic of standing up to Trump is just crazy enough to work. But, no, the GOP has not learned that lesson. They’ve chosen spinelessness instead, and even after a decade of this, I still cannot understand why.