Words & Phrases

We can do without Todd Blanche

Acting Attorney General Todd “I love you, Sir” Blanche for a while looked like he had the inside track on the permanent post. Violating the Epstein Transparency Act and dissembling about release of the files are just the sort of ethical abominations Donald Trump demands of his attorney general. While credible lawyers cringed at the indictment (as obviously violative of the First Amendment) of former FBI director James Comey for commenting on seashells, that, too, is just the type of prosecutorial abuse Trump wants. However, two events last week suggested “Attorney General Todd Blanche” might be a designation even Republicans could do without.

First, the prosecution persecution of deported-then-retrieved-then-indicted Kilmar Abrego Garcia blew up in Blanche’s face. A federal court judge not only dismissed the case but hammered home key adverse evidence that Blanche supplied warranting Abrego Garcia’s release.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., of the Middle District of Tennessee ruled on a record replete with damning facts that the government’s decision to reopen a closed case against Abrego Garcia for transporting undocumented immigrants stemming from a November 2022 traffic stop was an illegitimate, vindictive prosecution. In stinging language, Crenshaw invoked the revered Attorney General Robert H. Jackson’s famous warning that the worst abuse of power comes when a prosecutor “will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.”

Crenshaw cited repeatedly the key piece of evidence: Blanche’s “unrebutted public statements tying the reopened investigation” to Abrego Garcia’s successful suit challenging his deportation to CECOT. Crenshaw wrote that the inference of vindictiveness was supported by the “reopening of the investigation, Blanche’s unrebutted statements, and [Blanche aide and associate deputy attorney general Aakash] Singh’s sustained oversight.” Judge Crenshaw emphasized, “Blanche’s statements tie Main Justice to the tainted investigation and confirm what motivated it.”

Judge Crenshaw found the Justice Department could “not explain the Government’s change in position to remove Abrego Garcia and not prosecute him to then prosecute and not remove him.” Crenshaw recounted:

[Blanche’s] public statements stand unrebutted. Blanche stated that the Executive Branch began “investigating” Abrego after a judge in Maryland “questioned” the Executive Branch’s decision to deport him. The Court previously found that Blanche’s “remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights,” and that Blanche “directly tie[d] [Homeland Security’s] investigation to Abrego’s Maryland suit.”

Blanche’s words directly confirm that the Executive Branch reopened the criminal investigation because the Judicial Branch required the Executive Branch to facilitate Abrego’s return from El Salvador.

Ouch. It’s one thing to lose a case critical to Trump. (Abrego Garcia infuriated the regime when he challenged Trump and Stephen Miller’s evil deportation scheme — and won!) It is quite another to lose it because you gave the defense critical evidence of vindictive motive. “Instead of investigating the November 2022 traffic stop to identify who was responsible for the human smuggling, Blanche started the investigation to implicate Abrego,” Judge Crenshaw wrote. “He did so to justify the Executive Branch’s decision to remove him to El Salvador.” Trump wanted a Roy Cohn attack dog, but in Blanche he has a loose-lipped bumbler.

Trump’s primary use for DOJ these days is to harass his enemies under the guise of legitimate law enforcement. Blanche’s blunder makes him a poor choice for that task. Crenshaw’s order nailing Blanche for vindictive prosecution puts other judges on notice; in these concocted revenge cases, judges will be that much more skeptical and less inclined to extend the “presumption of regularity” to Blanche and his attorneys. Blanche sure does not seem the ideal attorney general to pursue Trump’s revenge cases.

If the Abrego Garcia case was a blunder for Blanche (in large part because it confirmed critics’ accusations against Trump’s vicious deportation scheme and lies about Abrego Garcia), then the anti-weaponization fund might turn out to be Blanche’s career ender with Trump. Blanche, in testimony before Congress and then in a heated, disastrous row with two dozen Republican senators, did nothing but infuriate lawmakers over Blanche’s demand that they approve Trump’s “payout pot for punks,” as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) so colorfully put it. After two hours with Blanche, Republican Senators voiced their fury, taking turns bashing Blanche. The irate senators were unusually candid:

• Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sneered: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.”

• Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson called the scheme a “galactic blunder.”

• Tillis appeared disgusted: “Under what circumstances would it ever make sense to provide restitution for people who were either pled guilty or were found guilty in a court of law? You want to talk about maybe providing restitution for people who weren’t found guilty? Fine, but if you do this, why not for the poor, mostly peaceful prospect protesters in Kenosha; in Portland?”

Blanche not only failed to calm the storm; he wound up provoking usually docile senators and maring his own standing with the people who would have to confirm him if he were nominated for the job. (As a result of the blow-up, the Republicans had to flee D.C. and forgo a vote on the reconciliation bill.)

Even if Trump sticks with Blanche as his nominee, the rate at which Blanche is alienating Republican senators (and at which Trump is creating new defectors in the Republican Senate ranks) suggests Blanche might not make it through a confirmation fight.

Let’s hope that a lawyer who is this undisciplined, untrustworthy, and unethical does not get the AG job. If his prat-falls knock him out of consideration, we would be spared ever having to hear the phrase “Attorney General Blanche” — a phrase that a democracy struggling to hang on to the rule of law could certainly do without.