Dem
47
GOP
53
Acting AG Todd Blanche, who very much wants to drop the "Acting" from his title, got two pieces of good news yesterday. The first is that the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote this morning to advance his nomination to the whole Senate. The second is that Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) officially confirmed they are now "yea" votes. Taken together, these developments mean that Blanche is positioned for final approval within the next week. The earliest the vote can take place is Saturday, but a vote on Monday is more likely, for obvious reasons.
That said, reporters have been counting noses, and it turns out Blanche isn't quite home free yet. There are at least five Republican senators who have not committed to voting for Blanche. They are:
Since Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is not voting right now, a "nay" from any three of these five people would torpedo the approval. Also, don't sleep on the possibility of a surprise "nay" from someone who is not on this list.
What might be giving these senators pause? Only they know for sure, but there are two obvious possibilities that suggest themselves. The first is that nobody really believes the Trump slush fund/IRS amnesty is really dead. The documents that Blanche posted to eX-Twitter on Sunday night have, according to legal experts, more holes than a wheel of Swiss cheese. To take one obvious problem, a settlement cannot be vacated unless all parties to the settlement sign off on that. This did not happen here.
The other problem, which comes somewhat out of left field, is that there is concern among evangelicals that Blanche is not sufficiently committed to keeping abortion as illegal as is possible, in as many places as is possible. It was reported yesterday that the would-be AG has been working the phones with evangelical leaders to assure them that he really, really opposes reproductive choice. If there is an out-of-nowhere "nay" on Blanche's confirmation, it will likely be a deep-red-state senator voting "nay" for this reason.
Despite all this, we still think Blanche is on the glide path to confirmation. The five senators listed above are not saying "yes," it is true, but they are not saying "no," either. And Thune knows a thing or two about whipping votes. It remains our guess that Cassidy and Curtis will fall in line, Paul will cross the aisle, and the two women will split their votes. And of the two women, our guess is that Murkowski will be the yea, so as to give Collins the ability to cast a "principled" nay vote (or a vote of "present").
It also remains the case that even if and when Blanche gets the job, he may live to regret it. The much-more-unfettered Donald Trump of Trump v2.0 demands that his AG and his Department of Justice do his bidding, at all times. The problem is that there's a pesky little thing called the Judicial Branch, where the great majority of the judges are not Trump lackeys. It's easy for Robert Kennedy Jr. at HHS or Doug Burgum at Interior to offer up whatever blather the President demands. But the AG and his underlings have to actually put together credible court filings, and get them past a grand jury, and then a judge, and then a petit jury (or then a judge again). That is where the rubber meets the road.
At this very moment, Blanche is getting an object lesson in how things work, courtesy of a colleague whose office is just down the street from his, namely U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C. Jeanine Pirro. She was more than willing to adopt the Trump party line on the Lincoln Reflecting Pool, and to claim that the damage done was the work of vandals. Consequently, she secured, and got, five indictments of alleged vandals.
The problem here is that the evidence supports the conclusion that this was an incompetent (no-bid) contractor who had no experience with this kind of job, and no business doing this kind of job. That contractor got an "assist" from Trump himself, who ordered that "The Beast" and other vehicles be driven onto the new surface, while it was still curing, for an inspection.
As we noted yesterday, Pirro could not make Trump's version of events stand up in court, because judges are sticklers for, you know, evidence. Those squares. So, Pirro had to dismiss the case against former Olympian David Hearn on Friday of last week, and the cases against three other defendants were dismissed yesterday. The DOJ was also forced to admit to the truth of why the Reflecting Pool turned disastrous.
The DOJ's version of events—aka the correct version—makes Trump look like a liar, and makes his administration look incompetent. He doesn't much care about the former, but he is enraged by the latter. So, the President is sticking with his fantasy version of what went wrong, and is hinting that Pirro may be sacked in short order.
So, Todd Blanche, even if and when you win the current battle, that is just the beginning. You'll want to make sure to lay in a large supply of antacid, and to avoid signing a lease for longer than a year. In fact, you might want to check and see if your landlord is open to one of those 6-month student leases. (Z)