Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche erupted at reporters Tuesday slamming “completely false” reporting about “weaponization” of the Justice Department.
The rebuke came after a reporter asked Blanche how he would balance “relentless” pressure from President Donald Trump to “see his perceived political enemies prosecuted” against the administration’s stated goal of ending weaponization at the DOJ. Blanche, who was Trump’s personal attorney during the legal battles after his first term, refuted that such pressure exists and pointed out the slew of investigations launched into Trump during the Biden administration.
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“When you talk about weaponization and it’s become a word that is supposedly a — that when we talk about ending weaponization as if that’s a bad thing for us to do. OK. People in this room — OK,” Blanche said. “People in this room for four years, some of you, same people sat here with the last administration when you saw a weaponization of this department, the likes of which had never been seen in history. And some of you are looking down now, and I get it because you had a president who was indicted four times by this department.”
In one of those legal battles, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg secured an indictment against Trump in March 2023 centered around a 2016 non-disclosure agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels, eventually securing a conviction.
Special counsel Jack Smith secured indictments over Trump’s handling of classified materials and efforts to contest the results of the 2020 presidential election. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also secured an indictment of Trump on charges pertaining to his efforts to contest the 2020 election results.
“You had a — you had a president who, who along with this department had assistance. So this department helped two other local DAs go after the president,” Blanche continued. “You had this department who stood idly by while states tried to keep President Trump off the ballot. OK. That’s what happened the past four years. And so when you — when I’m asked questions or when I see reporting about shock and awe at this supposed weaponization of this department, of this Department of Justice, it means nothing to me because it’s completely false.”
The Supreme Court said that Congress alone had the power to enforce the “insurrection clause” of the 14th Amendment in an unsigned March 2024 ruling after the Colorado Supreme Court decided that Trump was disqualified under the provisions of the 14th Amendment. Blanche reminded reporters that the administration is targeting “bad guys.”
“What we’re doing and what we’ve been doing for the past 14 months is changing this department. It’s changing this department. We’re no longer — people say the president wants to go after his political enemies. No, the president has said time and time again that he wants justice,” Blanche said. “And — and if you look at what happened to him, his family, his administration, the agents that protected him, people that — that happened to just walk by him on a given day, they had to — they got subjected to massive investigations by — by this department.”
“So — so I — I understand the question and I understand the — the pretty constant role of the media that somehow this department is weaponizing itself, but it happens not to be true,” Blanche continued.
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