Welcome back to our Substack series to help you stay informed and engaged in protecting the Justice Department. Each month, we pull highlights from Justice Connection’s DOJ Tracker to offer a more digestible way to keep up with the latest attacks.
Here’s what happened in July.
Todd Blanche’s Confirmation Process
On July 15, Todd Blanche appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing for Attorney General. Senators grilled him on a range of topics, including his handling of the Epstein files, and his involvement in the Anti-Weaponization Fund and President Trump’s IRS immunity deal.
Ahead of the hearing, Justice Connection organized and sent the committee a letter signed by more than 1,200 former DOJ employees calling on senators to reject Blanche’s nomination. The letter chronicles the decimation of DOJ’s career workforce under Blanche’s leadership and its impact.
“The consequences of Blanche’s attacks on DOJ’s apolitical workforce radiate beyond the halls of Main Justice, affecting the entire country,” it says. “They’ve meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done as well – leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable.”
Justice Connection also released two videos warning that promoting Blanche to be the permanent Attorney General will further erode the rule of law under this administration. The first video features a January 6 prosecutor and police officer describing Blanche’s whitewashing of the violence that took place on that day. “Todd Blanche does not serve justice. He serves criminals who beat up cops and assaulted our democracy,” former D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who was critically injured on Jan. 6, says in the video.
The second video features former DOJ prosecutor and Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb warning that under Blanche, “there will be no ethical lines between the White House and the Attorney General.” Blanche’s actions signing off on vindictive prosecutions, boasting of firing prosecutors and agents who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith investigations, and securing a sweetheart immunity deal for Trump and his family make him “unfit” to be Attorney General. (See how Justice Connection led the fight against Blanche’s confirmation here.)
Days before Blanche’s confirmation hearing, a federal judge in Florida issued a scathing order criticizing the Trump-IRS settlement as collusive. Judge Kathleen Williams wrote that Trump’s lawyers acted in bad faith and, along with DOJ, used “the Court to provide some legitimacy ... to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.” She went on to write that “This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights; it was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the Parties were not adverse.” Her determination mirrors former federal prosecutor Perry Carbone’s analysis written for Justice Connection’s Substack on the collusive nature of the settlement.
At Blanche’s confirmation hearing on July 15, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) asked him whether the settlement could still be executed since Blanche had refused to confirm in writing that the Fund was dead. Blanche said that Trump “could potentially say that, I suppose, that we breached by not moving forward.”
Blanche also repeatedly told Senators that the language in the IRS immunity addendum is “standard,” but at a spotlight hearing held by Senator Booker on July 22, Carbone refuted that assertion. “The standard language for a waiver is, ‘We hereby release the parties to the litigation for liability relating to the subject matter of the litigation’,” Carbone said. “That’s not what this is. Some of this language is mind-boggling… This is an extraordinarily broadly written waiver.”
On July 22, Senator Booker convened a spotlight hearing to correct the record following Blanche’s evasive testimony the previous week – an event Justice Connection worked closely with Sen. Booker’s office to coordinate. Justice Connection’s Communications Director, Peter Carr, testified about his own firing by Blanche and the culture of fear that now pervades at DOJ. “These firings send an unmistakable message: agents, analysts, lawyers, and even spokespeople can be fired simply because of their assigned cases,” he told Senators. “This jeopardizes the department’s ability to pursue tough cases and hold the powerful to account.”
Blanche was also questioned on the botched release of the Epstein files under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Survivor Dani Bensky testified on July 16 that her name, along with more than a hundred other victims’ information, was released over and over despite her lawyer submitting her name for redaction prior to the initial release and multiple communications with DOJ after the release to fix the redactions. When Senators pressed Blanche on why he had not met with survivors, he claimed that he was prohibited to do so by law, which is untrue. It was only after Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) made it a condition of his vote that Blanche finally met with Epstein survivors.
Survivors described the meeting as “an hour of deflection, interruption and gaslighting” in a letter sent to Cornyn and Tillis. Liz Stein, who testified at the July 22 spotlight forum, told reporters that “It had everything to do with Blanche checking a box so that he can get a promotion.”
Here are a few other things you might’ve missed:
Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon is ramping up “election integrity” efforts. Last month, she announced that she will send election monitors to six states during the upcoming primary elections. She also sent a letter to election officials in all 50 states threatening criminal prosecution if there are any instances of noncitizen voting in upcoming elections. Meanwhile, DOJ continues to lose in court over its effort to obtain state voter rolls. On July 23, a federal judge in Kentucky dismissed DOJ’s request for voter registration data, making the department’s record in these cases 0-17.
Paranoia over leaks escalated this month after the New York Times reported that President Trump was unable to ride the Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet due to security concerns. Over the July 11 weekend, FBI Director Kash Patel was directed to oversee the investigation from the White House – a departure from the longstanding practice of the White House not interfering with FBI investigations. As part of the investigation, some government officials were asked to turn over their phones at the White House. DOJ also subpoenaed New York Times reporters and their relatives for phone records in its search for leakers. DOJ later withdrew those after a judge cast doubt on whether DOJ lawyers followed their own procedures in subpoenaing reporters. Relatedly, on July 12, DOJ and the Pentagon announced a joint task force to investigate leaks.
DOJ submitted the first-ever application to the Alien Terrorist Removal Court in an effort to deport individuals quickly. The ARTC was created in 1996 to handle deportations of suspected terrorists based on classified information, but it was never used because other legal avenues proved easier and more strategic. The Chief Judge of the ARTC issued an order on July 16 seeking additional information, and encouraging the government to have “more thoughtful consideration” of its course of action.
The FBI told employees that it will no longer investigate ICE-related shootings or assaults. This came after two more shooting deaths of civilians by ICE agents in Maine and Texas.