WASHINGTON — Todd Blanche, best known as the lead criminal defense attorney for Dickhead Donny, exited his own Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday after determining that answering questions about the law did not fall within the job description of attorney general.
Blanche had been before the Judiciary Committee for approximately 40 minutes when Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked who had drafted a legal release shielding the former president from liability in a $10 billion lawsuit. The nominee stared at the document, then at the senator.
“I did not personally type the language,” Blanche said. “I do not know the name of the person who did. That is a question for human resources, not a nominee for chief law enforcement officer.”
The exchange, which lasted nine minutes, ended with Blanche conceding that he had signed the filing and that the ideas within were consistent with his advice, but that the actual typist remained a mystery. “I wasn’t going to micro-track a career employee’s keyboard,” he added.
Shortly after, an unrelated question from Democratic staffers about whether Blanche intended to meet with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking ring, who were waiting in a room down the hall, prompted the nominee to stand, smooth his jacket, and stride out of the hearing room. Capitol reporters caught the following exchange:
“Mr. Attorney General, you going to meet with the Epstein survivors while you’re here, sir?” a reporter asked.
Blanche did not break stride as he approached an elevator. “How do you think it went?” he asked no one in particular before the doors closed.
Inside the hearing, the proceedings lurched forward. Senator Whitehouse turned to a separate release in which Blanche had introduced the terms “lawfare” and “weaponization” as the basis for dismissing cases. Asked whether those terms had ever been defined in a statute, case law, or any dictionary of legal terminology, Blanche paused.
“I think they are just legal terms of art,” he said. “They have been used by the legal community and by people within government. I’m not sure that they’re in Black’s Law Dictionary, but neither is ‘fake news,’ and I hear that all the time.”
The committee recessed briefly to consult dictionaries. Black’s Law does contain “lawfare,” a 21st-century term for using legal systems as a weapon, but not “weaponization” outside general usage. No one on the committee asked a follow-up.
The hearing was expected to resume Thursday, but a spokesman for the nominee said schedule conflicts might prevent Blanche from returning. “He arrived prepared to be confirmed, not deposed,” the spokesman said. A transcript of the hearing was entered into the record, with a note indicating that a door slam would be included in the official audio as Exhibit A.
