Nomination of Todd Blanche

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last week, President Trump announced that he intends to nominate his former personal attorney Todd Blanche to serve as the next Attorney General of the United States.

When Blanche was under consideration to be Deputy Attorney General, the No. 2 position at the Justice Department, I reminded him of the importance of DOJ maintaining its independence from the President and the pull of politics.

Regrettably, over the past year, he has disregarded that call and erased that line, placing loyalty to President Trump above all else and damaging the independence and credibility of the Department in ways that will have ramifications for decades.

It appears that blind loyalty has paid off for Blanche, which is exactly how President Trump incentivizes his appointees to compromise their integrity.

How did Blanche earn the nod? I will tell you.

During his brief audition as Acting Attorney General, Blanche took the weaponization of the Department to new extremes.

He presided over the creation of a $1.8 billion slush fund that would funnel money to allies of the President, including January 6 insurrectionists who beat up cops, in a purported legal settlement between the President and the government he runs.

It gets worse.

As part of that settlement, the IRS is permanently barred from auditing past tax returns of President Trump, his family, and related companies.

Let me state this another way: The President of the United States sued the government he runs in order to get cooperating Federal agents to give away taxpayer dollars to the President's political allies and permanently shield the President, his family, and his companies from accountability for any past tax crimes.

And Blanche acted exactly how President Trump expected him to: He advanced Trump's personal interests at the expense of the American people.

While deploying the Justice Department as a shield for the President and his cronies, Blanche has also used our top law enforcement agency as a sword against Trump's political opponents.

He brought a paper-thin indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that has a long history of exposing violent White supremacist extremists who are allies of this White House.

And he brought DOJ's second baseless, vindictive indictment against former FBI Director James Comey. This prosecution was personally ordered up by the President, who despises Comey for overseeing the investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

Blanche's misconduct as Acting Attorney General is just the most recent link in a chain of controversies that has surrounded Blanche during his tenure at DOJ--controversies that demand transparency and answers.

Last week, appearing before the House Oversight Committee, former Attorney General Pam Bondi told lawmakers, ``[Todd Blanche] was in charge of the process and the entire release of the Epstein files.''

Setting aside Bondi's failures in leadership on this issue, Blanche's direct role in the Department's failure to follow the law and protect the victims and survivors of Epstein's abuse is disqualifying.

These failures follow the inexplicable transfer of Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein's coconspirator, to a minimum-security prison after Blanche personally conducted an inappropriate and ineffectual 2-day interview with her.

Such a move is unprecedented for someone convicted of the crimes she committed and rightly received bipartisan scrutiny.

Survivors deserve an Attorney General who will ensure transparency and fairness in the justice system; instead, many of them were exposed while the network of people around their abusers remained redacted.

When Blanche appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing, my Democratic colleagues and I will press him for answers and urge him to comply fully with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Consider Blanche's own words when, at an April press conference, he made clear that he was so devoted to President Trump that he would serve him in any capacity, even if he was not chosen to be the Attorney General nominee.

He said that if he was not nominated, his message to the President would be ``[t]hank you very much, I love you sir.'' He added that ``I don't have any goals or aspirations beyond'' serving Donald Trump.

That should tell the American people all they need to know about where Blanche's loyalty lies.

That love manifests as slush funds, partisan prosecutions against those the President feels have slighted him, and redirecting DOJ resources from protecting the American people from grave threats to treating the American people as grave threats.

Blanche has helped Trump achieve the goal that he couldn't in his first administration: fully warping the Department of Justice, the Nation's top law enforcement agency, into his personal law firm; corruption with doors wide open; political loyalty to the extreme; and a willingness to ignore the values of the Constitution.

When the Senate considered the confirmation of Todd Blanche to be Deputy Attorney General a year ago, I voted no.

The independence of DOJ has been decimated under Blanche's authority. I had no confidence in him before, and after everything we have seen, I doubt we can have confidence in him now.

After his fingerprints were found all over this so-called ``Anti- Weaponization'' fund, a few of my Republican colleagues signaled he may face hurdles on the road to confirmation.

Will any of them muster the courage to join Democrats in actually holding Blanche accountable and demanding answers regarding the host of concerns I have outlined today? Time will tell.

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