美参议院司法委员会推进布兰奇司法部长提名

This is [music] Bloomberg Law with June Graasso from Bloomberg Radio. The problem with confirming Todd Blanch is that he has never been able to shed his role as criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump. He just can't do it. He does not represent the American people now. He will never represent the American people. He will never do what's best for the American people. He will only do its best for Donald Trump.

When he is sworn in as attorney general, he will have to swear to uphold, support, and defend the Constitution. But we know that oath will take a backseat to his loyalty to the president. It was a consistent criticism from Democratic senators like Adam Schiff and Maisie Herono to the nomination of Todd Blanch to be the next attorney general. His apparent willingness to aggressively push to meet all of President Trump's demands eroding the traditional independence of the Department of Justice.

It had looked like Blanch's nomination was in jeopardy under pressure from two Republicans over the controversial deal settling Trump's lawsuit against the IRS with a $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund to compensate his allies. But Republican Senators John Cornin and Tom Tillis dropped their opposition after Blanch posted an order rescending the fund late Sunday night. I've never liked this 1776 fund. It made no sense to me and I thought it was an insult to the police officers and the people that defended us on January the 6th.

It's done. It's been rescended and I am satisfied.

Tillis may be satisfied, but Democratic senators like Cy Booker say the papers attached to Blanch's post have no legal significance at all.

This is ridiculous. We got nothing. no guarantees whatsoever that this slush fund still can't go forward. We got nothing that the president of the United States can't cheat on his taxes and have no accountability.

The vote to advance Blanch's nomination was 12 to 10 along party lines. Joining me is an expert in constitutional law, David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law. David, so tell us about the two pages Blanch posted. an order signed by him and an unsigned memo from the Justice Department.

He basically typed up what he said at the hearing and posted it. There's literally nothing new there. And indeed, he said there was nothing new there. He's telling the truth on that. I'm sure he prepared his talking points for the hearing very, very carefully that those words were not extempiraneous. And these are the same words he says looking entirely retrospectively that the so-called weaponization fund did not get off the ground.

He does not make any promises that they won't do something like that tomorrow. But he says, and I think this is historically accurate, it did not start. And then he says that the immunity for Trump is limited to Trump, his family, and his organization, which were the parties to the case. We always knew that. So he is setting to rest the fears of people who can't read, but he is leaving the rest of us just as nervous as we were before.

The settlement agreement says this settlement agreement may be modified only with the written agreement of the parties and President Trump didn't sign anything and he told reporters on Wednesday that he didn't even look at this.

Yeah, there's so many holes here. It's hard to count them. Blanch says the agreement didn't go forward, but as you note, they don't modify it and he doesn't have authority to modify it unless you say, well, actually, he's Trump's lawyer in all respects, so he can modify it on behalf of both the plaintiffs and the defendants, which I don't think is quite the case. But he has no authority to modify it because it requires the agreement of the plaintiff's council.

So, he didn't modify it. He just said they didn't act on it, which is true, but doesn't mean they won't act on it in the immediate future as soon as he's confirmed. And he says that they haven't put the money out there, but he doesn't promise not to raid the Justice Fund for payoffs for more Trump affiliated law breakers. The judgment fund is still there. And if Senator Cornin really was concerned about this, he should have asked Mr.

Blanch for the administration's agreement to an amendment to the justice fund. A quick unanimous consent bill amending the justice fund to make it unavailable to pay for settlements with anyone affiliated with the president. That would be an easy fix to make sure this never happens again. As far as we can tell, that wasn't even requested, much less done. Cornin admitted that the written asurances Blanch gave could later be reversed, but said despite that, he believed the commitments that Blanch had given him in recent days.

I mean, this reminds me of Susan Collins saying she believed Brett Kavanaaugh when he said that, you know, Row versus Wade was safe. And then when we looked at it, it turned out that Senator Collins had accepted as an assurance something that surely wasn't. Justice Kavanaaugh and indeed justices Alo and Roberts before him had said that Roie Wade was settled law, which is obviously true. But he also was seeking a job where he would have the authority to unsettle it, which he did.

And so they describe the present without make any promises for the future. And the senators that vote for their confirmation then pretend to be surprised when they act on powers that they clearly had, clearly retained, and never swore off. I can absolutely believe that if all Todd Blanch said in private to Senator Cornin was more or less what he said in public at the hearing that he will adhere to that. The old settlement fund won't go forward.

There will be a new settlement fund that you and I and anybody else who doesn't have an electron microscope won't be able to tell from the old one, but it'll be new. So, he will have nominally kept his word. Now, also a federal judge in Florida had issued a ruling preventing Trump from enforcing the settlements, saying that the lawsuit was brought for an improper purpose to gain the impremature of judicial legitimacy for a settlement that had no viable basis in law or fact.

Trump on July 31st filed notice with the court that he's going to appeal that ruling. What does that tell you? It tells you that the weaponization fund is not dead, that the tax immunity is not gone and that this is just a second saga in the collusive litigation because of course Trump appeals that decision and then he orders the Justice Department not to fight the appeal. So it will be uncontested in the appellet court.

I hope the 11th Circuit has the integrity to appoint someone to participate as a friend of the court to make the arguments for affirming what the district court did. But saying we're going through more judicial proceedings where we control both sides of the case should give nobody any reassurance. The whole point of our system is that is an adversary system and it only works well it only purports to work well when there are serious advocates on both sides.

There's never been that in this case.

Democratic senators voiced their opposition to Blanch for other reasons. The departure of thousands of attorneys and staff at the Justice Department, the weaponization of the department to pursue Trump's political enemies, his protecting Trump in the bungal release of the Epstein files, to name a few. How do you judge his performance as acting attorney general?

Mr. Blanch has taken more than 200 years of careful, mostly nonpartisan professionalism at the Justice Department and thrown it in the trash. And he has shown everybody just how politicized the department could be. When someone singlehandedly destroys the tradition of an agency, he should not be continued in a position of leading that agency. And if Mr. Trump is determined to have Todd Blanch there, he should be serving in an unconfirmed capacity.

What he will now have is the blessing of the United States Senate, which was well aware of all the things that he did. This will of co

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