Let’s Be Clear: Todd Blanche Is an Unqualified Hack Who Shouldn’t Be U.S. Attorney General

5 min readLet us state the obvious, because to state the obvious remains a kind of patriotic duty in the land of the madmen: Todd Blanche is no more qualified to be the attorney general of the United States than Jeffrey Dahmer was qualified to be chef d'hotel at the Pfister in Milwaukee.Simply being this president's personal attorney is disqualifying enough. Simply being any president's personal attorney is disqualifying enough. Imagine we're back in 1973, and the Nixon White House announces that it is replacing John Mitchell at the DOJ with Herb Kalmbach, who ended up doing six months in the federal pokey for Watergate-related crimes. But thanks to the carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court, there no longer is any such thing as a political crime as it relates to the executive branch. We don't have to be concerned about anything like that.Now that we’ve established that, we can discuss what third-rate weasels John Cornyn and Thom Tillis turned out to be. From Politico:Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has a clear path to the Senate Judiciary Committee advancing his nomination to the permanent job after two GOP holdouts confirmed Monday they would vote for him. The statement from Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) comes after the late-night announcement Sunday of a Justice Department agreement to clarify a controversial May settlement agreement between President Donald Trump and the IRS.A successful Judiciary vote Tuesday would set Blanche up for confirmation on the Senate floor later this week, before the chamber breaks for August recess.“We want to express our gratitude to Mr. Blanche and his staff for working with us on this, and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon,” Cornyn and Tillis said in a joint statement. The senators suggested their agreement with Blanche also satisfies the concerns of several other Republican senators off the Judiciary Committee who have raised concerns about the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” created in the original settlement, as well as provisions immunizing Trump and his family from some tax audits.“We are pleased that the Department of Justice has issued a formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund. Additionally, the Department has acknowledged in a binding written order that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs and the scope does not extend beyond the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury, addressing concerns that multiple of our Republican colleagues share,” Cornyn and Tillis said.Why, oh why, Lord, are innocent children like these never at my poker table? Apparently, Cornyn and Tillis are planning to cruise into their Trump-induced retirement as co-owners of the Brooklyn Bridge.As Aaron Blake at CNN points out, the deal that was enough to satisfy these two imminent retirees is as shoddily constructed as the president's reflecting pool rebuild was.The problem with Blanche rescinding the “anti-weaponization” fund order is that it wouldn’t seem to necessarily fully kill off the fund. As the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy has explained, the settlement’s term ... state that it could be “modified only with the written agreement of the parties.” That would include Trump. So while Blanche has rescinded a separate order he wrote that actually created the fund under the terms of the settlement, the settlement itself still exists—and could seemingly be enforced.In fact, Cornyn and Blanche basically explained all of this during an exchange at Blanche’s confirmation hearing in mid-July, before they agreed to greenlight his nomination. When he started pressing Blanche, Cornyn asked whether the settlement agreement had been modified by the parties, including Trump. (It hadn’t, Blanche said.) Under Cornyn’s questioning, Blanche admitted that even if he verbally promised to fully kill off the fund, the settlement remained an “enforceable document,” and Trump could file a lawsuit seeking to enforce its terms.Now, suddenly, and somehow, Cornyn and Tillis have developed a newfound faith in the word of an egregious con man and his bunco apparatus. Even some Republicans are laughing up their sleeves at the whole business.“Absent such a modification agreement, however, the Anti-Weaponization Fund is still viable and could be revived at any time, despite Blanche’s insistence to the contrary,” McCarthy said. And even some supporters of the anti-weaponization fund suggested Blanche’s document could just be rendered moot. “Can be undone after Tuesday,” Republican lawyer Mike Howell, who applied to serve on the “anti-weaponization” fund’s board, wrote on X late Sunday. “The Anti-Weaponization Fund is great.”What’s worse is that, apparently, Cornyn and Tillis are cool with the provision by which the president, his descendants, and all of his corporations are immunized against any and all violations of the tax laws. That’s not a sweetheart deal. That's a $5,000-a-night Escort deal.While Blanche wrote that the IRS immunity deal was limited to the parties to the lawsuit—seemingly Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization—it’s not clear how solid that is, either. ... But the original document sounds like it applies more broadly than just to Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization. It says the federal government will be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing any and all claims … that … have been or could have been asserted by Defendants against any of the Plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals (including, without limitation, family or others filing jointly), or parties including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries …”It’s difficult to square that with how limited Blanche says the immunity deal actually is. And this document, unlike the one pertaining to the anti-weaponization fund, wasn’t signed by Blanche. So again, the issue is whether Blanche’s new document actually changes anything, legally speaking.In its October 5, 1931, issue, Time commented on the curious rise through the heavyweight boxing ranks of mountainous Italian tomato can Primo Carnera, who was more mobbed up than the Brooklyn docks.Since his arrival in the U.S., backed by a group of prosperous but shady entrepreneurs, Carnera's career has been less glorious than fantastic. His first opponents—Big Boy Peterson, Elzear Rioux, Cowboy Owens—were known to be incompetent but their feeble opposition to Carnera suggested that they had been bribed to lose. Suspicion concerning the Monster's abilities became almost universal when another adversary, Bombo Chevalier, stated that one of his own seconds had threatened to kill him unless he lost to Carnera.Primo Carnera’s entire career had more integrity than the way Thom Tillis and John Cornyn have ended theirs.