Senate confirmation hearings began on Wednesday for Todd Blanche, President Trump’s nominee for Attorney General. Blanche, who currently serves as Acting Attorney General, faced intense questioning from Democratic Senator Adam Schiff over alleged conflicts of interest and failures to recuse himself from significant cases.
Blanche pushed back strongly against Schiff’s allegations, insisting he had acted appropriately and consistently with the ethics requirements of the Office of the Attorney General. When Schiff questioned Blanche about his refusal to recuse himself from prosecutions related to Jan. 6, Blanche stood firm, telling Schiff he was not required to do so.
“You’re a lawyer, you know the rules,” Blanche told Schiff. “There are rules that say when I have to recuse and that’s not one of them.”
Blanche further defended his decision to vacate convictions for convictions related to Jan. 6. “I was the acting attorney general – so yes, my department moved to dismiss,” Blanche said.
Schiff received pushback from other witnesses as well. When Schiff asked Former Attorney General John Ashcroft if it was “appropriate” for the President to direct the Department of Justice to prosecute political enemies, Ashcroft responded that legal action was appropriate in the event of politically motivated prosecutions.
Ashcroft sent a clear message in his analysis of the lawfare waged against President Trump by Democratic opponents and affirmed the President’s right to present a legal defense against such attacks.
“I believe that the Attorney General of the United States has the right and responsibility to enforce the law uniformly, and if the law has been broken by the President’s ‘enemies,’ he has a duty,” Ashcroft said.
“They do not become exempt from following the law merely by their enmity to the president of the United States. As a matter of fact, the people who break the law are in enmity with the people of the United States… we used to call people who break the law, ‘public enemies,'” he added.