Can Justice Survive Todd Blanche?
A Saturday Prompt
Todd Blanche interviewed Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell for two days, then arranged her transfer to a cushy minimum-security prison. He has participated in the continuing cover-up by refusing to release millions of Epstein files, including those that could incriminate Donald J. Trump.
Blanche has assisted vindictive prosecutions of Trump’s perceived political enemies, advanced the plan for a $1.8 billion slush fund for Jan. 6 insurrectionists and others who have been “wrongfully treated,” overseen the deletion of evidence related to the Jan. 6 attack, vacated the seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders, and supported Trump’s ongoing lawlessness, including the rejection of myriad judges’ orders.
As the letter this week from more than 1,200 former Department of Justice employees who served in 14 Republican and Democratic administrations states, Blanche has led the “degradation of DOJ’s apolitical career workforce,” including the departure of some 16,000 employees, and installed a “culture of fear.” This effort has included, they note:
…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.
Rather than serving as the nation’s chief law enforcement official as the Acting U.S. Attorney General, Todd Blanche has continued his role as Donald Trump’s criminal defense attorney and personal lawyer. Rather than recognize the responsibility to ensure judicial independence—a critical hallmark of the DOJ’s role in serving justice and the people—one of Blanche’s top aides told the leaders of 93 U.S. Attorney’s offices in February that Trump is their “chief client.”
This coming week the Senate Judiciary Committee will conduct two days of confirmation hearings for Blanche. It’s hard to overstate how much more damage Todd Blanche can cause to the DOJ and justice itself if he were to be confirmed as the nation’s attorney general.
I would like to think these hearings will serve as a deposition to help expose the lawlessness of Blanche and the Trump regime. But Blanche has previously shown his skills of evasion and obfuscation under intense questioning. These hearings will also serve to reveal whether there is growing opposition to Trump among Republicans or—more likely—once again kowtow to his hostile degradation of our system of justice and the rule of law.
What do you think? Can justice survive Todd Blanche? While Blanche can continue to do enormous damage as Trump’s acting AG, is his promotion to AG another nail in the coffin of justice in America? Finally, once this regime has been driven from power, what kind of leader does the Department of Justice need to reset its course and regain the public’s trust in our system of justice?
As always, I look forward to reading your observations and for the America, America community to hear from each other. Please do be respectful in your remarks. Trolling will not be tolerated.
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Jack Smith is the man to try to bring trust back to the Justice Department.
Fierce enemies of justice — the “Bondi-Blanche-Trump-Miller-Vought” subset of humanity — cannot kill justice.
They can but stifle, suborn, subvert and pervert it — for a limited time, in confined spaces, only as narrow as their minds, and the reach others permit such narrowness.
The truth will out. Justice will prevail. Reality always asserts its dominance over frauds.
But persons, societies and whole nations can be ruined and utterly destroyed by the evil acts of unjust persons, and by the lazy or cowardly inaction of persons too morally weak to defend what is right and just.
Americans have done better than this in the past. And we have done worse. We can always destroy ourselves. But justice will forever prevail, with or without us.