Blanche Destroys Illusion of an Independent DOJ in Bonkers Interview

There are plenty of reasons to criticize the members of Donald Trump’s cabinet. Many of them are incompetent, some are downright malicious, and all of them are blatant sycophants. However, at least they are upfront about their intentions (or not smart enough to hide them).

Take the new attorney general, Todd Blanche.

On Sunday, he gave a mind-boggling interview in which he basically said that he had no interest in running an impartial Department of Justice (DOJ).

When he was asked whether he would pledge that the department would “always act independently of the White House,” he refused to do so.

“No, I’m not going to pledge that,” Blanche said. “And no attorney general should ever pledge that.”

Actually, every attorney general should pledge exactly that. DOJ’s independence from the White House is crucial in ensuring that lawless presidents will be held to account.

Of course, neither Blanche, who still acts like he is Trump’s personal attorney, nor the GOP majority in Congress, which also has the tools to rein in a crooked-commander-in-chief, have shown any interest in doing so.

The new attorney general (and it pains us every time we have to call him that) wasn’t done.

When he was asked whether the president should have a voice in individual prosecution decisions, for example, when it came to the former US Olympian who was falsely accused of destroying the lining of the Reflecting Pool, Blanche again refused to provide the obvious answer that he should not.

“Will I take the president of the United States’s view on something into consideration? Yes, of course. And I hope every attorney general in history would not answer that question differently,” Blanche said. “Just let’s play that out. The president of the United States, the elected president of the United States, says something to me. And I’m supposed to say to you, ‘I would say nope.’ I mean, that’s not the way it works.”

What???

That’s exactly the way it is supposed to work.

Of course, it hasn’t been that way under Trump, who has spurred investigations into and prosecutions of his political adversaries.

The sad thing is that all of this was so predictable.

Ahead of Blanche’s confirmation, we wrote that every senator who supports him knows exactly who he is and how this will go.

When they cast their votes, [GOP senators] will know that the DOJ won’t be headed by an impartial public servant but rather by a partisan hack who will either do the president’s dirty deeds himself or make sure Trump gets away with them.

Which means that anybody who supports Blanche is complicit in what happens next.

Of all of the terrible nominees that Senate Republicans have waved through, he may be the worst.

Not because he is the most awful person or the least qualified (a dubious honor that might belong to former Fox News morning show host and war crime apologist Pete Hegseth), but rather because of the monumental difference between what an attorney general is supposed to be and what Blanche is.

It didn’t take long for him to prove us correct.