What to Expect from Todd Blanche’s Justice Department?

I'm Sonali Kohutker, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali, an independently produced subscriber-supported program nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech, TV, and podcast platforms. My interviews are available to subscribers at Rising Up with Sonali.com. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was confirmed in a narrow 50 to 49 Senate vote on August 8th as the new Attorney General after a contentious hearing. All Democratic senators joined by Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted against Todd Blanche. He was President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, and according to the Constitutional Accountability Center, quote, the vote to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General might be a win for Donald Trump and Todd Blanche, but it is a loss for the American people. Joining me to explain why that's the case is Praveen Fernandez, Vice President of the Constitutional Accountability Center. This is an organization that's a nonprofit, law firm, and think tank dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution. Praveen also serves as a co-chair of the not above the law coalition, a nonpartisan coalition of over 150 organizations committed to protecting democracy and the rule of law. Welcome to the program, Praveen. Thank you so much for having me, Senali. So first, let's talk about who Todd Blanche is, who he was before he joined the Justice Department. I mentioned he was Trump's personal attorney. All right, some might say on the face of it, so what? What troubles you most about his background? What troubles me is, you know, Todd Blanche is not new to the Department of Justice. A lot of folks might be focusing on Todd Blanche merely after Attorney General Pambandi left and he became acting Attorney General. But the truth is, he has been at the Department of Justice since this... this second Trump administration began because he was deputy attorney general under Pam Bondi. So he has been at the Department of Justice as a deputy of Pam Bondi really since the beginning. And as you indicated in your setup of this conversation, he comes to this job with an incredibly unusual background, which is to say no other attorney general. or deputy attorney general, has come to the Department of Justice after serving as the president's personal criminal defense lawyer in multiple criminal proceedings. And so you see somebody who comes into this job where he is supposed to be a lawyer for the American people and is supposed to be America's chief...

law enforcement officer, and instead he comes into the job having served with Donald Trump as his client. And unfortunately, his record, while he's been at the Department of Justice, whether it was his deputy attorney general or attorney general, his record shows that he never stopped thinking about himself as President Trump's personal lawyer. And he has acted as if President Trump was his only client. As we know, the Attorney General is supposed to think of the American people as his client. There should be firewalls in place between the Justice Department and the White House. Give us a little backgrounder for why that is the case and whether those firewalls have now been eviscerated or is it just a temporary setback for the Constitution. No, it's incredibly concerning. I will say that it has been a well-established norm under White Houses and administrations, both Republican and Democratic administrations alike, that established that... DOJ makes prosecutorial decisions independent of influence from a president or White House officials, which is because, and this makes sense really when one thinks about it, because the Department of Justice has immense prosecutorial power. The Department of Justice is a powerful prosecuting force, and that power should be wielded with immense responsibility. So you have this. deeply entrenched, nonpartisan norm, that the Department of Justice should make its prosecutorial decisions driven by the facts and the law. Full stop. That's where it should end. And you see under this administration, that norm has been shattered. And this came to light, you know, most recently in the confirmation hearings for Todd Blanche, because, of course, Todd Blanche had prior to his confirmation hearings when he was deputy attorney general had basically made the statement that... DOJ independence was really not a thing. He didn't really seem to believe in it. When asked about that statement by senators at his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, and asked whether he would back away from that. In his written answers to senators, he refused to back away from those statements, meaning he holds a view that is a profoundly, it's like an outlier view from all of his predecessors in prior administrations who held the position of Attorney General. So we should be concerned that he is not committed to being independent when...

The Department of Justice makes these intensely important decisions, prosecutorial decisions. I will also say it's a particularly dangerous time for that norm to be shattered because normally you also have a very, very robust staff of career lawyers at the Department of Justice. These are not political appointees. These are the people who are legal civil servants who serve and the Department of Justice under under administrations of both parties, and basically are the institutional memory for the American public of how our laws should be enforced. And those could serve as speed bumps when you have an outlier or a decision that's hasty or ill-considered. And unfortunately, the Department of Justice has been eviscerated. Their career staff... huge numbers of them have been fired or pushed out. In some divisions, like the Civil Rights Division, you see more than 75% of career attorneys gone. And that is a huge brain drain, right? Because it takes decades to build up that kind of brain power, if you will, and human potential and resource. People go to law school and spend years getting the experience, work. their way up to get that kind of background to be able to serve in the Justice Department. Rebuilding that is going to be a challenge for any future administration. But I want to just interrupt you briefly, Praveen, just to counteract or to offer the sort of, you know, devil's advocate, which is that the Trump administration and its allies have said, well, Joe Biden weaponized the Justice Department and politicized it. And this is us writing the ship. How do you respond to that? I think that's a baseless, it's a baseless claim. I think the Trump administration is pointing to the fact that, you know, several allies of them face prosecution. But that's simply because they were accused seriously of committing. offenses. Some of them actually pled guilty, et cetera, or were convicted of offenses. And so you see things like the January 6th, you know, insurrection attempt to overthrow the will of the public and the will of voters. These are individuals who pled guilty. who were found guilty at the end of trials. We also saw immense efforts in that administration to try to insulate decision-making from any political apparatus. When the January 6th-related trial or investigation began of Donald Trump and senior associates, the Attorney General under Joe Biden made a decision to bring in a special prosecutor who was not a political appointee directly under Merrick Garland's supervision to make those decisions. And so you saw these various attempts, which are really sort of par for the course for prior administrations, of trying to insulate, you know, sensitive decisions, prosecutorial decisions from any appearance of political meddling whatsoever.

I hear those charges, but frankly, I think they're baseless. Now, let's talk about what Todd Blanche was asked to do to prove that he is deserving of leading the Justice Department. He was asked to disavow the so-called weaponization fund or anti-weaponization fund that was set aside, huge windfall of tax dollars set aside for the January 6th rioters. And he did put out a statement. He was also asked about whether he would allow the Trump family. to have a personal, complete personal immunity from the IRS from ever being audited? What position did he end up taking on both of those and how do you respond to his positions? So first, this is something he had been asked since this $1.8 million slush fund had first sort of reared its ugly head. And I just want to correct you, $1.8 billion. Oh, I'm sorry. What did I say? Million dollar, million. I mean, yes. It's so important. Like, that's a huge amount of money. Absolutely. 1.8 billion dollar slush fund. And, you know, since that reared its head and faced what is, you know, well settled, you know, across partisan lines, outraged. It sort of, it elicited that outrage from members of Congress, from the public, et cetera. And when. When he was asked to sort of put into writing some sort of assurance that the slush fund would not be proceeding, he refused to do that. It was only after two senators, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, sort of threatened to withdraw support at the committee level for his nomination. And his nomination seemed like it wouldn't come from the committee onto the Senate floor that he put out two orders. And they're both insufficient. One order. attempted to say that it was the Department of Justice policy that the slush fund was no longer operative. The second tried to limit the scope of the IRS audit immunity provisions that you were mentioning to try to limit that and it said that it would be, it was the DOJ's view that it was limited to the president, his sons and his company. not the larger sort of constellation of characters that were purported to be folded into an earlier version. It's important to say that under the terms of this attempted fake settlement, the terms of that fake settlement could only be altered by signed agreements by the parties. These two orders were not signed by Donald Trump. So that's the first thing that makes these... orders insufficient assurances for the American people. The first order had been signed by Todd Blanche. The second one about the IRS immunity.

agreement was not signed by anybody. So, and neither agreement was signed by Donald Trump. So, you know, you have an utterly insufficient attempt to try to provide assurance that this is over. I will also say the reason I'm not calling this a settlement is because this attempted settlement was, was criticized by a judge who threw out the entire proceeding that led to it and said, This should never have been in court in the first place because there were not adverse parties. Donald Trump was attempting to settle something with an IRS that was under his control. There were not adverse parties. DOJ was not actively filing briefs on the other side of this. So it seemed collusive and it seemed to Judge Williams, the judge who was looking at this, that the parties here were attempting to get. the imprimatur of the court, the blessing of the court on an attempted agreement that actually had no dispute and had no business being in court in the first place. And in fact, the judge, Judge Williams, the district court judge that I'm referring to, prevented the parties from ever referring to it as a settlement in the future. So what do you expect to happen now under Todd Blanche's leadership? And we can look back at what Pam Bondi did to examine whether Todd Blanche will do the same. In effect, Pam Bondi was ousted because she couldn't fulfill Trump's agenda effectively enough. She was criticized for her handling of the Epstein files, which continues to dog the Justice Department and also just basically accused of, you know, by Trump. that she didn't go far enough to prosecute his political enemies. It's a tough position for anyone to be and even if one is deeply sycophantic. Maybe Todd Blanche will prove that wrong. What do you expect to happen under Todd Blanche? Todd Blanche's leadership at the Justice Department. So you're right to highlight that the criticism that President Trump and his allies seem to have of then Attorney General Pam Bondi was that she didn't go far enough or fast enough. And you think then of Trump's social posts, basically asking her to go after his perceived enemies, people like, you know, New York Attorney General Letitia James, James Comey, et cetera. It's a truth social post that directed her to go after his perceived political enemies and call them, quote, guilty as hell. Those were the words he used. So you can look at no more direct pressuring of somebody who's supposed to be making independent decisions to prosecute enemies. I think that, you know, we're not going to see any resistance or potentially any need for Donald Trump to be sort of posting those sorts of messages because it seems like in Todd Blanche, who's found someone who is going to grease the skids for whatever it seems that the president wants. And I fear that he inherits the Department of Justice at a place where there are all the other structural mechanisms that served as guardrails before.

just aren't in place with respect to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, something that you rightly highlight. That has been a continued debacle. DOJ has continued to not comply with a bill that Congress passed in 2025 by a nearly unanimous margin. Think about how rare that is these days, Senali. Congress passed that, and they were supposed to release these files by last year. They blew past that deadline. And then when they did comply partially, they released a fraction of the files. with deep redactions, seemingly they're protected powerful, powerful men. And then the very people they were allowed to sort of protect, which is the identities, those are the individuals that weren't protected when they partially complied with the act. We saw survivors of Epstein's horrible abuse, identifiable information about them, you know, released. And so it was a debacle. And we know that that was at Todd Blanche's doorstep because Pam Bondi, in subsequent congressional testimony, told us that Todd Blanche was in charge of the release of the Epstein files. It was also Todd Blanche who flew to personally interview Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex offender. And to, after he obtained what he thought was information that that painted President Trump in a positive light, mysteriously, Ghislaine Maxwell was then transferred to a lower security facility that does not house convicted sex offenders. And so we see that Todd Blanche, once again, seemed to be serving as the president's lawyer, despite the fact that he was supposed to be at DOJ serving as the American People's lawyer. And I fear we're only going to see more of that going forward. What finally can people do about this? What is your long-term view of how the Justice Department under Todd Blanche doing Trump's bidding can be stopped, pushed back on, pressured? So first, people need to listen and watch carefully. The public is a powerful engine of accountability for government. And the public needs to be watching these things. The same things that led to the outcry. for the $1.8 billion slush fund. The outcry about these IRS immunity provisions, they need to be vigilant to make sure that that doesn't rear its head again. There is already litigation going against this IRS immunity provision because, of course, that violates other federal laws.

that are supposed to shield the IRS from making decisions based on any interference in the White House or White House officials. And so that litigation is ongoing. People should watch that. People should encourage their members of Congress to be powerful oversight, you know, sort of officials. As you know, Congress has an oversight power. The Constitution allows them. as part of their investigative power to inform their legislative efforts to do oversight on government officials, to see whether further legislation is needed. And that is a powerful, powerful force. Congress can subpoena administration officials to ask, hey, I want to know exactly how X or Y happened. And so all of these are things that are within the public's power, if they continue to watch and continue to act as engines of accountability for these government officials who are supposed to be doing work on their behalf. Give out a website, Praveen, for the Constitutional Accountability Center? Yes, we do. It's the us constitution.org. And we'll post a link to that from our website as well. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Sunali. I appreciate it. My guest has been Praveen Fernandez, Vice President of the Constitutional Accountability Center, and I'm Sonali Kohutkar, host and executive producer of rising up with Sonali and independently produced subscriber-supported program nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech TV, and podcast platforms.