WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� will confront questions Wednesday about his brief but turbulent tenure atop the Justice Department during a Senate confirmation hearing that will test President Donald Trump’s grip on Republican lawmakers whose support the nominee will need for the job.
Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, has run the department on an interim basis since April, during which time he has into Trump foes, functioned as the public face of meant to compensate the Republican president鈥檚 allies and alarmed press freedom advocates with of news media leaks.
Those actions will receive fresh scrutiny at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing as Blanche testifies for the opportunity to serve out the duration of Trump’s term.
The stakes are high given the upheaval inside the department, where mass firings and resignations have and because of concerns by Democrats and other critics that the department under Blanche’s watch is being weaponized in pursuit of the president’s political opponents. More than 1,200 department alumni have come out against his nomination.
Blanche will need the support of each Republican on the panel
Blanche, who is expected to be uniformly voted down by Democrats on the committee, must win the support of all Republicans on the panel for his nomination to advance.
A particular focus is on Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who in May and has said he won’t decide on Blanche’s nomination until after the hearing, and Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who has opted Tillis has been an outspoken critic of that the Trump administration created to compensate people who feel unjustly persecuted by the criminal justice system and then quickly withdrew.
Tillis has said he will not support for attorney general anyone who equivocates on the events of , when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to halt the congressional certification of Trump’s election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. The senator, however, recently said he doesn鈥檛 have any concerns about Blanche鈥檚 record regarding the events of that day.
With the death of South Carolina Republican , who was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, there are 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats on the panel. If even one Republican on the committee votes against Blanche, it could scuttle his nomination.
Questions await about the $1.776 billion fund and the Epstein files
The $1.776 billion fund, called the Anti-Weaponization Fund, created a particularly rocky moment for Blanche. He initially defended it during congressional appearances only to reveal later that it was being scrapped 鈥� even while resisting calls to give those reassurances in writing. The turnabout followed fierce bipartisan backlash that came to a head during a tense closed-door meeting he had with lawmakers.
The fund arose out of a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over his leaked tax returns. The Florida judge overseeing that case issued that said Trump and his lawyers had manipulated the court system in bringing the lawsuit in the first place. The judge, Kathleen Williams, said Monday she was troubled by Blanche’s involvement in the settlement given that he previously represented Trump.
鈥淗e鈥檚 got a few more questions to get through, after the judge鈥檚 decision today,鈥� Cornyn told reporters Monday.
Blanche will also face questioning over of the settlement that afforded Trump and members of his family protection from tax audits and that, he has said, remains on track despite outrage over it from even Republicans.
Other testimony is likely to focus on Blanche’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, especially after his predecessor Pam Bondi told lawmakers behind closed doors after that Blanche was the department鈥檚 point person on the release of documents from the sex trafficking case into the late financier.
The staggered release, mandated by an act of Congress, was , including redaction errors that left exposed nude photos showing the faces of potential victims. Some names, email addresses and other identifying information were either unredacted or not fully obscured.
A former federal prosecutor and key member of Trump’s defense team as the Republican battled four indictments between his first and second terms, Blanche arrived at the Justice Department last year as deputy attorney general. He then ascended to the top job after Trump ousted Bondi, who had frustrated the White House by struggling to bring successful cases against Trump’s political opponents.
Blanche has tried to satisfy the president in that regard. He has appointed a new prosecutor to spearhead a Florida-based investigation centered on former government officials Trump dislikes. The Justice Department under Blanche’s watch also of ex-FBI Director James Comey, another adversary of Trump, on charges of threatening the 47th president by posting a social media photograph of seashells in the numerical arrangement of 鈥�86 47.鈥� Comey has said he assumed the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence.
Blanche has denied accusations that he has been weaponizing the department. But he has also insisted that he sees no problem with the president鈥檚 interest in Justice Department matters and that he feels no pressure to placate him.
鈥淲e have thousands of ongoing investigations and prosecutions going on in this country right now,鈥� Blanche in May. 鈥淎nd it is true that some of them involve men, women and entities that the president in the past has had issues with and believes should be investigated. That is his right, and indeed it is his duty to do that.鈥�
Blanche has also presided over an aggressive enforcement of news media leaks, with prosecutors most recently demanding that a group of New York Times journalists testify before a federal grand jury after they reported on security concerns involving the new . The Times’ executive editor, Joseph Kahn, criticized the subpoenas, praised his journalists鈥� work and said: 鈥淲e expect to prevail.”
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