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Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I begin with a quote: ``I am his lawyer.''
``I am his lawyer'' is what Todd Blanche said in the course of his confirmation hearing for the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate. "I'm his lawyer,'' meaning, I am Donald Trump's lawyer.
Now, admittedly, he had no intention of saying it that way. He had no intention of allowing that revelation to slip, but it was a glaring illustration of his mindset. He was, he is now, and he will be Donald Trump's lawyer, his personal lawyer, as he was during the criminal and civil trials--a trusted, loyal consigliere.
He is not an independent lawyer with a law firm; he is in-house. He is literally kept by the President on his personal leash.
You may think I am overstating it, but, in fact, he demonstrated it throughout that hearing, and the through line was he will be guided by blind loyalty to the President and contempt for the law, enabling the President in continued corrupt crypto schemes, as well as condoning and empowering the President to establish a slush fund for January 6 rioters, as well as tax immunity. Even though, purportedly, those agreements were limited, he will enable the President to circumvent the so-called agreements, which are a sham. They are a fraud on the U.S. Senate just as Todd Blanche committed a fraud on the Florida U.S. district court that referred him to the New York bar for investigation in connection with that wrongdoing.
Maya Angelou famously said:
When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.
And Todd Blanche has shown us repeatedly who he is, who his boss is, and whose loyalty he will hold uppermost.
I was a U.S. attorney in Connecticut for 4\1/2\ years, part of the Department of Justice, which I revered--more than just respected; in fact, revered--because it epitomized what lawyers should be in upholding the highest standards of ethics and morality. Even when we made an error, we were supposed to state it--in effect, acknowledge it before the court.
I will never forget the first time I appeared before a U.S. district court judge in Connecticut, a former Federal prosecutor himself. And he asked me: Whom do you work for?
I said: The government.
He said: No. You work for and you represent the United States of America.
Think of it for a moment: walking into a courtroom representing the United States of America, sworn to uphold the Constitution--not any President, not a legislature, but the United States of America.
That is not what Todd Blanche has done as a Justice Department official under Donald Trump. It is not what he will do, as he showed clearly. Nothing epitomizes it better than the answer he gave at one point when he referred to the attack on the Capitol that occurred on January 6, 2021--we all remember it; we went through it; we saw it--the attack on the Capitol which injured and contributed to deaths of our Capitol Police. He referred to it as ``events.'' He couldn't bring himself to refer to it as an attack, as it clearly was, because Donald Trump will not allow any of his nominees to refer to the January 6 riot and insurrection as an attack on the Capitol. It was an attack designed to prevent the lawful and peaceful transition of power, and to call it anything else is disrespectful to the brave Capitol Police who defended us that day and disqualifying for a judicial nominee and for any position of trust in the U.S. Government.
Earlier today, I participated in a press conference with some of the prosecutors--the career prosecutors--who pursued convictions of those rioters for the serious violations of Federal law that they incurred. They made the point that the failure to acknowledge an attack on the Capitol or that President Biden won the 2020 election shows a lack of independence that should be disqualifying.
They have submitted a letter to all of us here. And I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record because they make the point that these statements by nominees for executive office or for judgeships, in effect, perpetuate the Big Lie.
To the Members of the United States Senate: We are attorneys who prosecuted cases related to the events of January 6, 2021, when thousands of people violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to interrupt the House of Representatives and the Senate's work to count and certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
January 6 was a violent attack on American democracy. It was also a vicious attack on the brave officers of the U.S. Capitol Police and Washington Metropolitan Police Department, more than 150 of whom were injured during the attack, and five of whom died in its aftermath. Rioters, some of whom were heavily armed, beat and injured police officers and reporters, and threatened the lives of the elected officials and staff members inside, while many rioters stole, damaged, and destroyed property, obstructed a government proceeding, and trespassed.
As career public servants dedicated to public safety and the rule of law, we charged more than 1,500 defendants in connection with January 6, convicting more than 1,270 (including 1,009 guilty pleas) before our work was halted in January 2025.
Unfortunately, President Trump has worked to erase the magnitude and meaning of January 6. On his first day of his second term in office, Trump commuted the sentences of 14 and granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other people convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6. Further, since President Trump returned to office in January of 2025, his judicial nominees, when asked, have been unwilling to tell the truth about the tragic events of January 6. None agreed that it was an insurrection, only one could bring themselves to use the term attack, and not one of the nearly 60 nominees could acknowledge the full trauma and suffering that the attackers caused that day.
This institutional denial of truth--especially by potential federal judges--is dangerous, yet it's become all too clear that President Trump expects his nominees to provide evasive answers about both the attack of January 6th, 2021, and the results of the 2020 presidential election.
No senator, regardless of party, should vote to confirm a judicial nominee who is unable to state the most simple facts about the attack of January 6, 2021. Specifically, no judicial nominee should be confirmed if he or she cannot identify that (1) January 6 was an attack on our democracy, (2) the attack was led by supporters of Donald Trump, and (3) Joe Biden was legitimately elected in the 2020 election.
For judges nominated for lifetime seats in the judiciary branch, this refusal to contradict the President's lies is particularly dangerous, and raises significant questions about whether, once confirmed, a nominee could act independently and free from political interference from the president that nominated them. The truth matters. We thank you for your consideration.
Brendan Ballou, Special Counsel, Antitrust Division (2016- 17, 2020-25); Adam Dreher, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (2022- 2025); Mona Lee M. Furst, Senior Litigation Counsel, United States Attorney's Office for the District of Kansas (1998- 2022); Alexis Loeb, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California (2013-2024); Jason M. Manning, Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Columbia (2017-2024); Sean P. Murphy, Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Puerto Rico (2018-2025); Zachary Phillips, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado (2008-2026); Karen Rochlin, Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, (1989-2025); Michael J. Romano, Trial Attorney, Crimina Division, Public Integrity Section (2019-2025); Jacob Steiner, Trial Attorney, Criminal Division, Public Integrity Section (2020-2025); Andrew J. Tessman, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of West Virginia (2019- 2025); Samuel White, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (2020-2026).
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Election deniers have no place on the bench or in the Department of Justice. And, in fact, in response to my submitted question relating to the 2020 election, Todd Blanche refused to state that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and he stood by his prior statements perpetuating the Big Lie.
The through line here is whatever Donald Trump says, Todd Blanche does. He will do anything, say anything, conceal anything that serves Donald Trump's interests.
Now, in some ways, the most tragic illustration of this through line is Todd Blanche's treatment of the Epstein survivors. Let's remember, he showed us again who he was when he revictimized those survivors by completely botching the release of the Epstein files. He failed to redact the survivors' personal information and defied the Epstein Files Transparency Act by redacting unnecessary information. Why? To shield Donald Trump.
That was the purpose of the meeting in the Situation Room when the threat to release additional files was to Donald Trump because he was mentioned in those files. And the Situation Room meeting, which is recounted in ``Regime Change,'' a recent book by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, showed clearly the effort was not to do justice for the survivors but to protect Donald Trump.
He refused to meet with the survivors. He spent 2 whole days with Ghislaine Maxwell. Why? Well, we don't really know because there was certainly no information useful to any investigation that emerged from it. What did happen was that she was transferred to a cushy prison camp and has remained silent.
And when he finally agreed to meet with the survivors, they described it as demoralizing and degrading. In fact, they called it gaslighting.
He protected Donald Trump at the expense of those survivors, and one of the most heinous sexual abuse and trafficking rings in American history has yet to produce the kinds of convictions necessary--the convictions in court, the prosecutions of the coconspirators and others complicit and legally responsible. That is not the conduct of an Attorney General; it is the conduct of Donald Trump's personal lawyer.
I'm his lawyer.
That is the through line. He certainly was acting as Donald Trump's lawyer when he issued two documents recently, supposedly ending the contract that was involved in the agreement on Donald Trump's purported, so-called lawsuit seeking damages from the revelation of his personal tax information.
We know that two of our colleagues, Senators Cornyn and Tillis, said that they needed something in writing, but what they got in writing was virtually meaningless in showing that either the slush fund--the so- called anti-weaponization fund--or the tax immunity was in any way materially changed. In fact, the document that purported to say that the slush fund was dead, in reality, is a sham. It is a fraud on the U.S. Senate, just as he allegedly committed a fraud on the court in Florida.
The reason is quite simply that there was a contract here. The agreement produced that contract. The agreement was between Donald Trump and the United States. Donald Trump did not in any way forgo or renounce any rights under that contract. It is still binding. He could go into court tomorrow and force it to establish the $1.8 billion thug fund.
And, likewise, the immunity agreement, which is unprecedented, worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Donald Trump, tax immunity from audits, in effect giving him a free pass for everything that occurred before this immunity, negotiated by Todd Blanche with only Todd Blanche's signature on it--the limiting of that immunity from tax audits to Donald Trump, his sons, his organization, worth hundreds of millions--unprecedented, unconscionable, and unacceptable from an Attorney General of the United States, dealing with potential tax violations of law, signing away tax liability no matter how serious it might be. It is unprecedented, and no one else but the President would even think of trying to get it in this way, under these circumstances. And he was able to get it only because Todd Blanche acted as his personal lawyer, not as Attorney General of the United States.
Senator Cornyn himself put it well at the hearing about this contract for the slush fund:
To be clear, the President of the United States, who was the plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the weaponization fund, and there's no guarantee that he or one of the other plaintiffs might raise that issue by way of a breach of contract lawsuit in the future.
Todd Blanche answered in the affirmative. He well knows that the document that he prepared and released does nothing to change that contractual obligation.
The conversation that Todd Blanche had recently, talking to individuals interested in reproductive rights, I think is extremely revealing and important. In a private call just last week, he said the quiet part out loud; that he would work to restrict abortion in every single State all across the country.
He wants to block States enacting their own policies and laws. He wants to make abortion-access States follow the laws of abortion-ban States. In short, he wants to strip Americans of their right to choose and strip States of their right to govern. That is not the conduct or statement of an Attorney General of the United States carrying out and respecting the Constitution; it is fidelity to an ideologue--the President--who wants to impress his base, not represent the American people.
Todd Blanche showed us who he was when he ducked and dodged my question about deep-sixing an investigation into possible pay-to-play commutation of a federally convicted felon, David Gentile. David Gentile reportedly paid $2.5 million to a broker to obtain clemency. That clemency robbed his victims of nearly $16 million in restitution. When a U.S. attorney tried to investigate--the Eastern District of New York, U.S. attorney--Mr. Blanche reportedly killed the probe. That is not the behavior of an Attorney General; that is Donald Trump's personal lawyer.
So there is a powerful case against this nominee. I am under no illusion. We have seen this movie before. We saw it again when my two colleagues in effect caved--voted for his nomination yesterday. I am not here with rose-colored glasses. I know that Donald Trump will come down hard on any Republican colleague who has the temerity to say: We want a lawyer who represents the people, a lawyer who has fidelity to the Constitution and to the United States of America above the President, an Attorney General who will follow the law and insist that no one is above the law and no one is beneath it, an Attorney General who is true to the trust that we expect and to respect.
Todd Blanche might be the President's lawyer, but we don't have to be the President's Senate. I urge my colleagues to vote against this confirmation and remain true to what we should be in upholding the trust and the Constitution of the United States.
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