More than 1,200 former Department of Justice employees signed a letter this week demanding the Senate reject Todd Blanche's nomination as Attorney General, billing themselves as principled nonpartisan veterans of the department. Among the signatories: Lori Lightfoot, JP Cooney (Jack Smith's top deputy), and a former DOJ chief diversity and inclusion officer. Totally apolitical stuff.
The Letter Arrives, Right on Schedule
Blanche's confirmation hearings are set for July 15 and 16, and like clockwork, the opposition letter dropped on Tuesday, July 12. Fox News reports that the signatories frame themselves as alumni from both Republican and Democratic administrations, which is technically accurate in the same way that a steak is technically a salad if you put lettuce on the plate.
Blanche has been serving as acting AG since Pam Bondi's departure and was tapped by Trump to take the job permanently. That decision, apparently, was enough to activate roughly 1,200 former DOJ employees who suddenly remembered they had strongly held views about institutional norms.
The 'Nonpartisan' Roster Is Doing a Lot of Work
Let's go through some names, because the names are the whole story here. Fox News took a look at the signatories and found, among others: Lori Lightfoot, former mayor of Chicago, where violent crime rose sharply during her tenure and who has been a vocal Trump critic for years. JP Cooney, who was Jack Smith's top deputy during the special counsel investigation into Trump and is currently running for Congress on a platform that explicitly brags about having held Trump accountable. These are not exactly figures known for quiet, institutionalist restraint.
There's also Aaron Zelinsky, who served under Robert Mueller during the Russia investigation. Robert Turkavage, who ran for Congress as a Democrat in New Jersey. Sara Zdeb, who served as chief oversight counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin, whose staff will be sitting across from Blanche at the confirmation hearings. If you're building a list of people with a direct professional stake in the outcome of this confirmation, you're building this list.
Fox News also identifies Sam Bagenstos, a political appointee in both the Obama and Biden administrations who, per his own University of Michigan Law biography, touts his progressive credentials. And Terry Bain, a Democratic donor and former immigration judge who granted relief to over 8,000 immigrants during her time on the bench. The letter's claim to bipartisan credibility is doing heavy lifting.
What the Letter Actually Says
To be fair, the letter makes substantive arguments. According to Fox News's reporting on its contents, the signatories say Blanche has fired hundreds of DOJ employees, some allegedly for having worked on cases the president personally disliked. The letter warns that the department's core work is going undone, leaving communities less safe and national security more vulnerable.
Those are serious charges and deserve serious scrutiny at the confirmation hearings. If Blanche has been purging career prosecutors for reasons that have nothing to do with performance and everything to do with political loyalty to Trump, that matters enormously. The problem is that when your letter's most prominent faces include the mayor who presided over a crime surge and a congressional candidate whose campaign slogan is literally about prosecuting Donald Trump, you hand the other side the easiest possible deflection.
The DOJ Fires Back
The Trump DOJ did not let the letter land without a response. A department spokesperson told Fox News that the list is a "who's who of partisan activists, including liberal politicians such as former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who saw crime drastically rise under her tenure, Trump impeachment witness Pamela Karlan, and multiple former disgruntled Biden administration officials, some of whom were directly involved in the weaponization of the Department."
The spokesperson also put out a counter-list of law enforcement groups backing Blanche, including the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Major County Sheriffs of America. Whether those endorsements reflect genuine enthusiasm for Blanche or simply reflect those organizations' longstanding habit of backing whoever is running DOJ is a question worth asking. An anonymous former White House official, apparently unable to resist, told Fox News that the letter looks like someone "passed a petition around the MS NOW green room." Very helpful contribution, thank you.
The Hearings Are the Point Now
Blanche faces the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 15 and 16, and Fox News reports that lawmakers are expected to press him on the second indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, whose Instagram post reading "86 47" prompted a criminal referral. Democrats are expected to use the hearings to go after Blanche's overall management of the department and its direction under the Trump administration.
That's the actual battlefield. The letter is context. What happens when senators get Blanche under oath and ask him directly about firing career prosecutors, about the Comey indictment, about which cases the White House has taken an interest in, that is where the accountability either happens or doesn't. No petition changes that.
The Dingo Take
Here is the thing about letters like this one. They are almost never wrong about the underlying problem and almost always wrong about the execution. Is Todd Blanche a controversial pick who has overseen a DOJ that has fired employees, pursued cases with obvious political motivations, and operated more like a White House legal arm than an independent law enforcement agency? By all available evidence, yes. Is a letter signed by Jack Smith's campaign surrogate and the former mayor of Chicago the sharpest possible tool for making that argument? Absolutely not.
The frustrating part is that the letter's core accusations deserve a real airing. If career prosecutors are being fired for working cases Trump didn't like, that is a genuine constitutional problem and not just a partisan talking point. But Lori Lightfoot's name in the first paragraph is a gift to every Republican senator who needs a reason to dismiss the whole thing without engaging with it. The signatories handed the Trump DOJ a loaded weapon and then expressed surprise when it got fired back at them.
Blanche's hearings start Tuesday. Watch what happens when senators who aren't running for anything and don't need a press release start asking specific questions under oath. That's when we find out whether any of this matters, or whether the whole exercise, the letter, the counter-statement, the dueling endorsement lists, was just the Washington warm-up act for a confirmation that was already decided.
