What to Expect from Todd Blanche’s Justice Department?

FEATURING PRAVEEN FERNANDES - Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was confirmed in a narrow 50-49 Senate vote on August 8, after a contentious hearing. All Democratic Senators, joined by Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, voted against Blanche, who was President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney. 

According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, the “vote to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General might be a win for Donald Trump and Todd Blanche, but it is a loss for the American people.”

Praveen Fernandes is Vice President of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a nonprofit law firm and think tank dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution.  Praveen also serves as a co-chair of the Not Above the Law coalition, a nonpartisan coalition of over 150 organizations committed to protecting democracy and the rule of law. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about what Blanche's DOJ will look like and what to do about it.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So first, let's talk about who Todd Blanche is, who he was before he joined the Justice Department. I mentioned he was Trump's personal attorney. All right, some might say on the face of it, so what? What troubles you most about his background? 

Praveen Fernandes: What troubles me is Todd Blanche is not new to the Department of Justice. A lot of folks might be focusing on Todd Blanche merely after Attorney General Pam Bondi left, and he became acting attorney general. But the truth is, he has been at the Department of Justice since this second Trump administration began because he was deputy attorney general under Pam Bondi. 

So, he has been at the Department of Justice as a deputy of Pam Bondi really since the beginning. 

And as you indicated in your setup of this conversation, he comes to this job with an incredibly unusual background. Which is to say, no other attorney general or deputy attorney general has come to the Department of Justice after serving as the president's personal criminal defense lawyer in multiple criminal proceedings. 

And so you see somebody who comes into this job where he is supposed to be a lawyer for the American people and is supposed to be America's chief law enforcement officer, and instead he comes into the job having served with Donald Trump as his client.