President Trump’s attorney-general pick, Todd Blanche, faced the congressional music today as he sat for his Senate confirmation hearing. For five hours, Blanche fielded questions from the suddenly Lindsey Graham–less Senate Judiciary Committee on everything from his views on Trump’s weaponization of the Justice system, to the aborted so-called anti-weaponization slush fund, to his role in the Epstein-files debacle. Here’s how it all happened, as it happened.
And dodges a reporter’s question on meeting with Epstein survivors. MeidasTouch has the clip:
We still don’t know if Cornyn will support the nomination, but it appears Tillis is likely on board. There will another day of confirmation hearings for Blanche tomorrow but with people other than him. As Elie Honig explained ahead of time, Blanche will probably still get confirmed no matter what.
Schiff ended his back-and-forth with Blanche with a hypothetical, asking the acting attorney general what happened to him.
“What happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York? What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for? What happened to the prosecutor who once respected the rule of law?” Schiff asked.
