Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general filed a federal court document that cited Trump Derangement Syndrome, praised Trump as a genius real estate developer, and used all-caps to insult a historic preservation nonprofit. This is the man Republicans are about to hand control of the Justice Department.
The Legal Brief That Should End a Career
Let's establish what actually happened here, because you need to read this slowly. Todd Blanche, currently serving as acting attorney general of the United States, submitted a legal motion to a federal judge that began, and we are quoting directly from The New Yorker's Ruth Marcus, mid-rant: "'The National Trust for Historic Preservation' is a beautiful name, but even their name is FAKE."
It got worse from there. According to Marcus, the document went on to accuse opponents of suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome," name-dropped Barack Obama's former lawyer in a way that was presumably meant to be sinister, and pivoted to praising the president as "a highly successful real estate developer, who has abilities that others don't." This was a legal filing. Submitted to a federal district judge. By the man who may soon be the top law enforcement official in the country.
Marcus, writing for The New Yorker on Sunday, noted the document was technically addressed to Judge Richard Leon, who had issued an injunction against Trump's White House ballroom project. But Blanche was not really writing for Judge Leon. He was writing for an audience of one, and that audience does not wear a robe.
The Ballroom, the Billion Dollars, and the 'Free Gift' That Wasn't
The context here matters. Blanche filed this unhinged legal screed in defense of Trump's effort to build a ballroom at the White House, which Trump has claimed is being given to the country "FREE OF CHARGE AS A GIFT TO THE COUNTRY" (the all-caps are in the original court document, because of course they are).
There is one small problem with that framing. As Marcus points out, Trump has simultaneously been seeking a billion dollars in government funding for this project. So the "free gift to the nation" pitch is, to use a legal term, not accurate. But accuracy was clearly not the goal. The goal was to produce a document that would make Trump smile when someone read it to him.
The motion failed, predictably. Judges tend to be unimpressed when attorneys argue by all-caps insult. But the failure is almost beside the point. What matters is that this is who Republicans in the Senate are preparing to confirm as the head of the Justice Department.
The IRS Deal That Makes All of This Much Worse
The ballroom brief is embarrassing. What Blanche reportedly did with the IRS is something else entirely. Writing for AlterNet last week, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich laid out the case against Blanche's confirmation in terms that go well beyond professional embarrassment.
Blanche engineered an immunity deal, stemming from Trump's own lawsuit against the IRS, that Reich argues is designed to shield the Trump family from future audits and financial scrutiny. Reich's assessment was direct: the settlement exists "to prevent any future government inquiry into the corrupt dealings of Trump and his family."
The stakes Reich describes are staggering. Since returning to office, Trump has reportedly increased his personal wealth by an estimated four billion dollars. His children have added billions more. The money flows through cryptocurrency ventures, a critical minerals company called Vulcan Elements, a drone manufacturer called Powerus that later won a no-bid government contract, and a steady stream of real estate meetings between the Trump sons and officials from the United Kingdom, Qatar, Vietnam, and Hungary. If the IRS settlement holds, Reich argues, none of it gets examined.
The Pardon List That Should Make Your Jaw Drop
Reich also catalogued the pardons Trump has handed out since returning to office, and the list is worth sitting with for a moment. Philip Esformes, convicted in what Trump's own Justice Department described as the "largest health care fraud scheme ever charged." Joseph Schwartz, convicted for a $38 million fraud scheme. Todd and Julie Chrisley of reality TV fame, convicted for multimillion-dollar bank fraud. Lawrence Duran, who received clemency after a $205 million fraud conviction. Jason Galanis, whose sentence was commuted, and Devon Archer, who was pardoned, both connected to tens of millions in additional fraud.
Reich asks the obvious question: what did Trump receive in return? Nobody in the Senate appears to be asking the same thing out loud.
This is the context in which Todd Blanche's confirmation exists. A man who wrote a legal brief that reads like a Truth Social meltdown is being asked to oversee the department that is supposed to investigate exactly this kind of financial misconduct. The people he'd be shielding are the people who nominated him.
The Senate That Has Decided Not to Care
Marcus pointed out in The New Yorker that the math for blocking Blanche exists on paper. One Republican no vote on the Judiciary Committee could stop the nomination cold. Four Republican no votes on the full Senate floor could kill it entirely. A year ago, senators could at least point to Blanche's Judiciary Committee testimony, where he said political prosecutions "should never happen, period" and promised to follow the law if pressed to bring a bogus case. Now they have a record to judge him against.
So will any of them do it? Senate Majority Leader John Thune gave the game away when he told reporters that "obviously most of our members are pretty deferential to who the President wants." That is not a constitutional principle. That is a description of a legislature that has decided its job is to ratify whatever the executive branch sends over.
Marcus put it plainly: in a Senate that took its constitutional role seriously, Blanche would not win confirmation a second time. The question is whether enough Republicans still remember what that role is.
The Dingo Take
Here is the core absurdity of this entire situation. The man being nominated to run the Justice Department wrote a court filing so embarrassing that it failed in front of a federal judge, and his response to that failure appears to have been to get nominated for the biggest law enforcement job in the country. Todd Blanche is being rewarded for loyalty, and loyalty in this administration means being willing to debase yourself completely in service of the president's vanity projects and legal insulation.
Robert Reich's warning about the IRS deal is the part of this story that deserves way more attention than the ballroom brief. The all-caps rant is funny in a nauseating way. An immunity deal that potentially shields a sitting president's family from financial scrutiny in perpetuity is something different. If that settlement stands, and if Blanche runs the DOJ, the investigation that never happens will be the biggest story of the decade. We just won't know it, because it will never be reported.
Republican senators are about to have to go on record. They can vote for a man who turns federal court filings into presidential fan fiction and who reportedly helped engineer what Reich is calling the largest cover-up of presidential wrongdoing in American history, or they can vote no. Four of them. That is all it takes. History will remember which choice they made, even if the DOJ under Todd Blanche decides it would rather not look into it.
