Latest / THE DAILY BRIEF / The unconventional career of attorney general nominee Todd Blanche

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The unconventional career of attorney general nominee Todd Blanche · THE DAILY BRIEF

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  Speaker 1: Tomorrow, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche returns before the Senate
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  Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee seeking confirmation to serve permanently as the nation's
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  Speaker 1: top law enforcement official. It's his second confirmation hearing for
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  Speaker 1: a senior Justice Department role, but the first since overseeing
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  Speaker 1: a series of controversial decisions, including high profile investigations and indictments,
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  Speaker 1: as well as the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files.
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  Speaker 1: Our Justice correspondent Ali Rogan looks at Blanche's unlikely rise
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  Speaker 1: to the department's top job.
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  Speaker 2: The president's former lawyer, I have stood next to and
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  Speaker 2: defended President Trump as partisan prosecutors and politicians abused our
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  Speaker 2: legal system.
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  Speaker 3: Now nominated to be the people's lawyer full time after
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  Speaker 3: three months as Acting Attorney General, his path to get
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  Speaker 3: here improbable, growing up in a blue collar Denver suburb,
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  Speaker 3: taking night classes at Brooklyn Law School while working as
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  Speaker 3: a paralegal. At one time a registered Day Democrat who
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  Speaker 3: worked in the Southern District of New York's Violent Crimes
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  Speaker 3: Division for eight years, he was.
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  Speaker 4: A great teammate. Trial partner Mimi Rocca was his colleague there.
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  Speaker 4: He was a tenacious investigator. He liked to build cases,
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  Speaker 4: particularly cases involving drugs and guns and international narcotics and
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  Speaker 4: gangs and things like that.
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  Speaker 3: He then moved to private practice, representing Trump's former campaign chairman,
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  Speaker 3: Paul Mannifort in a mortgage fraud case. Then, following a
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  Speaker 3: call from Trump himself, Blanche left his white collar firm
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  Speaker 3: to join Trump's defense in the first ever criminal trial
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  Speaker 3: of a former US president. Financial Times reporter Joe Miller
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  Speaker 3: says at the time, Blanche was not politically motivated.
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  Speaker 5: Todd Blanche wasn't just a Democrat. He was quite a
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  Speaker 5: committed Democrat. In fact, his children like to remind him
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  Speaker 5: that on the day that Hillary Clinton lost, Todd Blanche
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  Speaker 5: even shed a tear. But he also knew that many
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  Speaker 5: of his friends in the white collar bar had refused
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  Speaker 5: to work for Donald Trump, and that Donald Trump was
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  Speaker 5: running out of options, so to speak.
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  Speaker 3: Trump was found guilty on all thirty four felony counts
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  Speaker 3: of falsifying business records stemming from hush money payments to
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  Speaker 3: adult film star Stormy Daniels. Blanche led Team Trump's outcry
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  Speaker 3: and later appealed the convictions.
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  Speaker 4: I very much believed that the.
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  Speaker 2: That the jury should have found President Trump not guilty.
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  Speaker 3: He also represented Trump in the federal classified Documents and
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  Speaker 3: election obstruction cases, both of which were ultimately dismissed.
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  Speaker 5: Blanche started to take on more of the Trump mannerisms,
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  Speaker 5: going on long rants within the court, sometimes interrupting the judge,
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  Speaker 5: pushing in his briefs the boundaries of legal discourse.
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  Speaker 3: Days after the president's twenty twenty four election win, he
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  Speaker 3: announced Blanche's nomination as Deputy Attorney General. How has he
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  Speaker 3: evolved in your estimation since joining President Trump's defense team.
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  Speaker 4: I wouldn't say it's so much an evolution as what
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  Speaker 4: seems to be a transformation. What we were taught to
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  Speaker 4: value in the Southern District of New York was to
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  Speaker 4: do the right thing, to seek justice, to serve the public,
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  Speaker 4: not any particular person or President.
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  Speaker 3: Blanche defended Trump during his confirmation hearing. Some senators questioned
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  Speaker 3: whether he'd act independently of the President as Deputy ag.
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  Speaker 5: I don't think that President Trump was going to ask
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  Speaker 5: me to do anything illegal or a moral and.
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  Speaker 2: So I don't. But if he does, you would say no,
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  Speaker 2: I will follow the law, senator period.
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  Speaker 3: The Senate confirmed Blanche by a vote of fifty two
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  Speaker 3: to forty six, Deputy ag Blanche became the face of
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  Speaker 3: the highly scrutinized review of files related to late convicted
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  Speaker 3: sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
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  Speaker 2: Today we are producing more than three million pages.
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  Speaker 3: He oversaw their turbulent release. After Congress passed bipartisan legislation
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  Speaker 3: calling for more transparency, Epstein's survivors quickly realized many of
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  Speaker 3: their names, images, and other personal information were unredacted.
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  Speaker 2: You don't expect to see your name, of course, right,
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  Speaker 2: and so as you're scrolling to see your name, it
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  Speaker 2: just brings up.
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  Speaker 5: It really is a level of PTSD.
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  Speaker 3: And some members of Congress claimed the DOJ withheld some
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  Speaker 3: files in order to protect powerful people involved with Epstein.
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  Speaker 3: Blanche called the redaction failures horrible and inexcusable, and maintains
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  Speaker 3: that three millions still hidden files are duplicates, irrelevant, or
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  Speaker 3: covered by privilege.
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  Speaker 4: We are not sitting on a single piece of paper
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  Speaker 4: often nothing that should be released.
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  Speaker 3: Blanch also came under scrutiny when he interviewed Epstein's accomplice,
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  Speaker 3: Glenn Maxwell, while she was serving a twenty year sentence
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  Speaker 3: in federal prison. Days later, Maxwell was transferred to a
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  Speaker 3: minimum security prison camp.
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  Speaker 4: Did you have anything to do with it, which.
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  Speaker 3: Blanche later said he approved.
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  Speaker 2: There was a tremendous amount of scrutiny and publicity towards
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  Speaker 2: her and the institution she was in. She was suffering
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  Speaker 2: numerous and numerous threats against her life.
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  Speaker 3: In April, Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, reportedly in
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  Speaker 3: part because he thought she was too slow to prosecute
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  Speaker 3: his political enemies. As acting aj Blanch quickly changed the pace.
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  Speaker 2: Today, a grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of
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  Speaker 2: North Carolina returned an indictment against James Collmy on two counts.
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  Speaker 3: Indicting former FBI Director James Comey for a photo he
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  Speaker 3: posted to Instagram a year earlier. Blanche also sped up
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  Speaker 3: the investigation of former CIA director John Brennan over statements
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  Speaker 3: he made to Congress on whether Russia interfered in the
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  Speaker 3: twenty sixteen presidential election to benefit Trump.
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  Speaker 2: He is extraordinarily qualified to do the job for a
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  Speaker 2: couple of reasons.
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  Speaker 3: Former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey, who served as acting ICE
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  Speaker 3: director in the first Trump administration, said Blanche's history with
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  Speaker 3: Trump is actually a benefit.
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  Speaker 2: Being someone's lawyer is a good history of working with
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  Speaker 2: someone and working effectively with some ASAI. I think in
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  Speaker 2: many ways that's a positive.
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  Speaker 4: It certainly should be a negative.
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  Speaker 3: But Blanche faces an uphill battle in the Senate where
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  Speaker 3: he'll need to be confirmed. He got a preview when
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  Speaker 3: he answered questions about the now defund anti Weaponization Fund
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  Speaker 3: for people who allege they've been victims of a weaponized DOJ,
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  Speaker 3: including January sixth protesters.
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  Speaker 2: I'm the acting attorney General, so don't say the president's
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  Speaker 2: former personal lawyer will do something the acting attorney general
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  Speaker 2: will do.
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  Speaker 3: Attorney General, you are acting today like the president's personal attorney.
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  Speaker 3: Before his hearing, a group of twelve hundred former DOJ
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  Speaker 3: employees signed a letter urging against his confirmation, citing his
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  Speaker 3: degradation of the DOJ's apolitical career workforce. Blanche dismissed their concerns.
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  Speaker 5: I'm going to still work hard and still work with
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  Speaker 5: the Senate Republicans or Democrats that have any questions for
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  Speaker 5: me about the validity or whether I should be confirmed.
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  Speaker 3: Tomorrow, Blanche faces the Judiciary Committee, which lost one of
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  Speaker 3: its most influential members, Senator Lindsay Graham. Graham's death means
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  Speaker 3: Blanche must secure the support of every committee Republican in
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  Speaker 3: order to proceed to a full Senate vote for the
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  Speaker 3: PBS News Hour. I'm Ali Brogan.
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