Todd Blanche will be a big issue in the Sullivan campaign
Sen. Dan Sullivan didn’t make a big show of hanging out with Todd Blanche when Trump’s unqualified choice for attorney general visited Alaska last week.
Sullivan would have found a way to accompany Blanche if he were not facing a tough election fight with Mary Peltola. Sullivan is keeping his head down about Blanche, which is Sullivan’s go-to strategy on any matter that carries a political risk.
His vote on whether Trump’s former personal attorney should be AG is an important one. He has voted for every other Trump nominee and will probably not end his streak now if Blanche’s nomination makes it out of committee.
Blanche’s role in the Trump $1.776 billion slush fund, his outrageous decision to insulate the Trump family from all tax investigations and his leading role in Trump’s illegal retribution campaign are reason enough for the Senate to reject Blanche.
But I suspect Sullivan will vote for Blanche. If he does not, it will only be because his vote will make no difference in the final result.
Blanche was here to try to get Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sullivan to support him, but he would never tell the truth about that. The opposition to Blanche is growing.
This week a federal judge denounced the Trump tax amnesty plan pushed by Blanche. The acting AG told the IRS to stop any and all Trump audits and never start another. The Blanche order violated federal law, Judge Kathleen Williams wrote.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is flanked by shadow Alaska AG Steven Cox, still on the state payroll, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy at the festivities regarding the settlement of litigation about the port in Anchorage. Blanche said it was in keeping with Trump’s desire to “have money going back to the states.”
“This is an important state to President Trump’s agenda,” Blanche told an Anchorage TV station during his stopover. “It’s an important state to the Department of Justice. I think almost every Attorney General comes here, as they should.”
“Look there’s 1,200 former DOJ employees I think out of what, 40,000? So I don’t know, I’m not a math guy but that’s not, that’s not a very high percentage. I think there’s people on there that were, there were work with Jack Smith special counsel. The fact that there are a group of individuals out there that do not want me to be attorney general, is OK with me,” he told Alaska’s News Source.
Blanche is not a math guy, but 1,200 is an enormous number in this context. He’s also not a justice guy.
The former DOJ employees charge that he has failed to follow his oath of office.
Among those who signed are former Alaska prosecutors Karen Loeffler and Julie Werner-Simon.
“The consequences of Blanche’s attacks on DOJ’s apolitical workforce radiate beyond the halls of Main Justice, affecting the entire country. They’ve meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done as well – leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable.”
“The culture of fear Blanche has instilled within DOJ’s workforce must end. Respect for career professionals must return. Would-be job applicants need to believe the Justice Department lives up to the virtue in its name. And instead of exhibiting fealty to the president, the Attorney General must heed John Adams’ admonition that our republic remains a “government of laws, not of men.”
“For the sake of the institution where we once proudly served, we urge you to reject Todd Blanche’s nomination,” they wrote to the Senate.
Blanche’s mishandling of the Epstein files is another reason for the Senate to send him packing. And Sullivan’s mishandling of his response to the Trump effort to hide the Epstein files is another issue on which Sullivan is vulnerable.
In a Sullivan form letter to Alaskans last year who asked him about Epstein, he ducked the central question about keeping Epstein’s actions secret, but said he believes the Trump administration would release information that could be released, etc.
“I trust the Department of Justice to carefully consider the release of relevant materials, while simultaneously ensuring that Epstein’s victims remain protected and that legal protocols are upheld,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan’s unwarranted trust in Trump knows no bounds.
“I recently stated that ‘President Trump directed the DOJ and Attorney General Bondi to release grand jury transcripts related to the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein . . . I believe the DOJ should release as much information as possible on Epstein’s horrific crimes, while protecting victims,” Sullivan’s form letter about Epstein claims.
Columnist Jennifer Rubin of the Contrarian wrote last month that Republicans who vote for Blanche will be haunted by Epstein’s survivors for as long as they are in office, including Sullivan.
She said of the Alaska senator, “As absurd as his faith in the Department of Justice was back then, a vote now for the man who thwarted the law and obstructed the release of the files would cement Sullivan’s image that he is Trump rubber stamp who would throw victims under the bus to keep his job.”
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