"I'm his lawyer," Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, describing his relationship with President Donald Trump. Blanche quickly corrected himself: "Was his lawyer," he clarified. But the slip went to the heart of the main question that senators should be asking as they decide whether to confirm Blanche's nomination as attorney general: Would he use that position to pursue justice or to advance Trump's personal interests?
Probably the latter, judging from Blanche's central role in Trump's brazenly corrupt "settlement agreement" with the IRS, which a federal judge this week condemned as the "improper" product of blatant self-dealing. That cozy arrangement, which was predicated on a lawsuit that U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said was phony from the beginning, delivered huge favors to Trump, his family, and his followers at taxpayers' expense.
One of those favors was a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund," which was designed to reward the president's allies and supporters by compensating them for their alleged persecution by the Biden administration. Blanche approved that scheme and repeatedly defended it. But it provoked an intense bipartisan backlash that persuaded him to ditch the plan two weeks after announcing it.
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