Attorney General Todd Blanche said this morning on CNN that he is not opposed to investigating and imprisoning Congressional Democrats if his boss, Donald Trump, orders him to do so, a clear violation of the oath of office he took when he became head of the Department of Justice.
Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Blanche was asked about a social media post Trump made in which very specifically ordered the DOJ to investigate Democrats for what he termed “extortion” and “weaponization.”
“President Trump said, ‘I am ordering the Department of Justice to look into this criminal act.’” Bash noted. “Are you going to follow that order and investigate Democratic members of Congress, and what is the criminal act you think he’s referring to?”
“Well, what we’ve seen over the past several days and even over the last several weeks are outright threats,” Blanche replied. “Many by elected members of Congress and some senators against anybody that’s conservative and anybody that happens to be a Republican. They’ve threatened donors, they’ve threatened individuals who are in college and might want to work for conservative institutions or for a conservative government or for President Trump. And that is extremely troubling. And it should be troubling to everybody in this country. And over the last several days, we’ve seen that the rhetoric even rise up to the point where they’re already — before they’re even in power — they’re talking about investigations and impeachments with no basis, no facts, just out there running around. That should be something that President Trump is very concerned about, and certainly I am as well.”
“They are talking about investigation as part of their oversight role that is prescribed by the Constitution, which you know is very well laid out,” Bash said. “Is that what you’re concerned about? Or you’re concerned about something else?”
Blanche responded, “Wait, wait, wait! No, no, no! They have a very unique role in oversight, I agree. Have you been listening to the rhetoric the past couple of days? You honestly think that all they’re doing is talking about their oversight obligations when they’re talking about going after. Basically every member of the cabinet, they’re talking about impeachments, they’re talk about going after companies, private companies who happen to have made investments in this country over the past couple of years. That is not oversight. I welcome oversight. Oversight is exactly something they should be doing.”
“So are you saying that you are going to investigate them?” Bash said. “And what you just described, is there a crime there?”
“Well, it depends on what’s said,” Blanche said. “So yes, there could be. You have free speech in this country. You are allowed to be critical of President Trump, of me, of this administration. But when the threats become so vile and so dangerous that you are telling people in college that they better be careful if they wanna work in the Trump administration because somebody will come after them, at some point you have to draw the line.”
Blanche was referencing comments made earlier this week by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who said she would discourage college students from going to work for Trump and being part of “enabling him.”
“I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration? That sounds fun, I might get an opportunity.’ I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that,’” Slotkin remarked. “I want that deterrence message sent.”
“You have an incoming chairman threatening — they’re not even in charge yet — saying ‘lawyer up’ to anybody in particular,” Blanche said. “So if that doesn’t bother you, if that does bother your viewers, then we really need to kind of wake up in this country, because it certainly bothers me.”
“[President Trump] said that the ‘Democratic lawmakers are extortionists and they should be imprisoned,’” Bash said. “Is that a possibility?
“Well, it depends on what the crime is and what they’ve done,” Blanche told Bash. “But listen, what President Trump is talking about, and it’s easy to sit here and talk about the president’s truths without actually talking about what he’s responding to, is you have members of Congress who, after Tuesday, have done nothing but threaten. Everything that’s happening in this administration. That is not governing, that is not leading, that is not oversight. I mean, you have Stephen Miller getting promoted to chief of staff and within moments — within moments — the leaders of the Senate and the Congress start threatening him, OK? That’s not oversight, that’s not governing, that’s not leading. That’s actually a disappointment and it’s sad and the president has every right.”
It sounds like Todd Blanche is going to be in need of a good attorney himself in the very near future. And now that we have video evidence of him admitting he’s willing to break the law for his boss, he’d better hope he has a damn good one.
