[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 128 (Wednesday, August 5, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4453-S4464]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Nomination of Todd Blanche
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am nearing the end of my Senate term,
and I am reflecting on some historic events which I have witnessed at
this table, at this desk. One of the most historic I remember--and
specifically the date--January 6, 2021. The reason why that day was
important was that the votes all across America had been counted to see
who was elected President in the 2020 election, and the process
involved certification by the House and the Senate of the electoral
votes that were to be counted.
In the past, it has been almost a pro forma event, hardly noticed by
anyone. But on January 6, 2021, it was much different--much different.
The Presiding Officer of the Senate for that electoral vote count is
the Vice President of the United States; in this case, it was Vice
President Pence.
There was more security than usual in the Capitol Building. To those
who are here today witnessing this session and visiting the Capitol,
you are lucky. You are protected by one of the best security forces,
police forces, in the Nation, the Capitol Hill Police. Most Americans
don't know much about them. Those of us who serve in Congress know a
lot about them. These are men and women who keep you safe and me safe
in the Capitol Building and make sure that the visitors have peace of
mind when they come and go.
We want to maintain the availability of this building to visitors
from certainly the United States, but from all around the world. And
these men and women--some in uniform, some in ordinary dress--make sure
that happens. Well, on January 6, 2021, there was a special emphasis on
security. The reason: It was not only a historic event with Members of
Congress in their chairs and the Vice President of the United States
presiding over the Senate. There was also a rally going on downtown by
the outgoing President of the United States, Donald Trump, at the end
of his first term.
He had summoned his supporters and friends to come for a rally down
by the White House and the Washington Monument that day. No
coincidence. It was an attempt to put pressure on Congress not to count
the electoral votes.
You see, the President then and now had this fiction in his mind that
he actually won the election. He was only off by 7 million votes--that
is how much he lost it by. But he kept filing lawsuits and making
protests and arguing that he should be President again. At one point,
he dispatched the thousands--thousands--of people that he had summoned
to Washington to leave the Washington Monument area and to march on the
Capitol, and they did.
So we were sitting inside with the knowledge that these thousands of
people were coming up to our building
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here, the Capitol Building, where we did business on this historic day.
We didn't quite know what they would do when they arrived. But if you
witness the videotapes from that day, draw your own conclusions. They
tried to storm the Capitol. They broke through locked doors, crashed
through windows to come into the building.
At approximately 10 minutes after 2 o'clock in the afternoon on
January 6, 2021, I was seated at this desk. Vice President Pence was
presiding, and I noticed something curious: Those doors opened and
members of the Secret Service came in and grabbed--literately grabbed--
the Vice President to pull him out of that chair; took him out that
door. And here we sat with no announcement, nothing, but we knew
something was going on outside with this rally that had been directed
up this way.
In a few minutes, a representative of the Capitol Police spoke to us
in the Chamber and said: Stay calm. Stay where you are. We are going to
make the Senate Chamber a safe place for you to stay no matter what
happens in the rest of the building. So some of us relaxed in our
chairs and looked around and waited for the next development.
The next development took about 10 minutes. Mr. President, 10 minutes
later, the Capitol Police came and said: Disregard that earlier alert,
leave in an orderly fashion, file through those doors, and follow us to
a safe location.
So we abandoned the Senate Chamber and the Capitol and left to go to
a building nearby and wait out this ordeal, which was going on in the
Senate.
What happened you can witness yourself on videotape. It is all there.
About 150 of our Capitol Police were assaulted by these demonstrators--
some seriously injured, others pushed to the brink psychologically,
which led to their deaths a day or two later. It was a horrible scene.
It wasn't until late in the afternoon that we were able to return to
the Senate to complete our business with the electoral vote.
What followed from that with the new President was an attempt to
investigate what happened that day and who should be held responsible.
There was nothing extraordinary about that. Anyone who did damage to
this great building or the people in it obviously should be held
accountable. And so the largest investigation in the history of the
Department of Justice and the FBI started.
At the end of the day, almost 1,500 individuals were charged with a
crime, and they were convicted. Some of them paid a fine, some served
brief periods of time, and others more serious offenses depending on
what they did. That was the reality of what happened.
Fast-forward four years, and what happened next? President Trump was
reelected. And with the power under the Constitution to pardon those
who committed crime, on his first day in office in his second term,
President Trump gave a full and unconditional pardon to every one of
the convicted demonstrators who stormed this building.
If you remember the scenes afterwards, it wasn't just an orderly
procession of people visiting this building. They crashed through
doors. They broke windows. They did their darndest to cause as much
damage as possible.
C-SPAN, which televises what happened here, kept the cameras running,
and we were able to see them scramble into the Senate Chamber, pose for
pictures sitting in the chair of the Presiding Officer, and riffle
through our desks. I watched as some person--I still don't know who it
was--went through my desk to look and see if there were some things
that he could take that day. I don't know whether he did or not.
But that is the sort of thing that went on for 4 or 5 hours while an
effort was made to mobilize police and state troopers and others to
reclaim the Capitol Building from the demonstrators.
The reason I bring up this event years later is because there is an
important issue to be voted on this week by the U.S. Senate, and that
is the choice of the next Attorney General of the United States.
The Acting Attorney General is Todd Blanche, who was President
Trump's personal lawyer when he was charged with crimes and who has
been Deputy Attorney General for months now. He is seeking a full-time
position.
One of the items of controversy is pretty easy to explain. President
Trump believes--and Todd Blanche believed at one point--that the people
who attacked the Capitol, the people who breached the Capitol, who
crashed through the doors, broke down the windows, threatened
individuals inside, should receive financial compensation for doing it.
Financial compensation.
And you say to yourself: They got a full, unconditional pardon by
President Trump. Now they want money too? And the answer is not only
yes, but, unfortunately, they have done it with some pride.
The Trump administration proposed an Anti-Weaponization Fund. And
just to give it a cute little twist, they appropriated $1,776 billion
for that purpose. Well, it didn't go over very well with Congress
because as we read this decree by the Trump administration, people
said: Wait a minute. We are giving money to people who were convicted
of a crime of attacking the Capitol, disrupting the business of the
Senate, injuring 149 Capitol policemen? We are going to give them not
only a pardon, but some sort of financial compensation?
That was the plan: The Anti-Weaponization Fund. And who was the
person who executed that plan? Todd Blanche, the person who is seeking
to become the next full-time Attorney General of the United States.
The controversy involving that particular proposal is well-known. Not
only was there a bad reaction among Democrats to this idea but many
Republicans as well.
Some of them kept their opposition behind closed doors. I understand.
But others were very vocal about it. In fact, two members of the Senate
Judiciary Committee said they want in writing, from Todd Blanche, a
promise that he would never create this fund to reward cop beaters and
demonstrators in the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
It went forward in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the
negotiations between two Republican Senators and Todd Blanche continued
until the beginning of this week when it was announced they had reached
an agreement. Sadly, that agreement--the so-called agreement not to
create the Anti-Weaponization Fund--is written in a way it wouldn't
pass law school Contracts 101.
There is no signature on any of these pages of promises when it comes
to future activity. They say: We are rescinding the previous order, but
there is nothing to stop a new order from taking place. That is a
gaping hole in the logic and the effectiveness of any of these
documents.
We should have clear indications from the parties to that lawsuit
that both sides agree; that would include the President of the United
States, who was a party to the lawsuit that led up to this. But they
can't bring it together because the President doesn't believe that the
Anti-Weaponization Fund should go away. He said publicly over and over
again he believes in it, wants to do it, wants to give the
demonstrators money. Todd Blanche thinks he has taken care of this
problem, but he has not produced any documentation to make that point
clear.
Secondly, there was a provision in a lawsuit. Now, here is what the
lawsuit is all about: The President sued the IRS and Treasury arguing
that they disclosed his income tax returns without his permission.
They arrested the man who actually did it--they caught him--and he
was prosecuted, as he should be. He broke the law. He knew he was
breaking the law when he disclosed the President's income tax returns.
The President sued the IRS and Treasury for billions of dollars--
billions--because they disclosed his income tax return. I have
completed quite a few years of public service. I disclose my income tax
return every year without fail as a Member of Congress and the Senate.
I am not posing for holy pictures; I am just trying to tell you it
isn't that big a deal if you follow the law.
Do you know what the settlement of the Trump lawsuit was for
disclosing his income tax returns? Part of the settlement said--get
this now, and Todd Blanche is the draftsman of this as well--part of it
said neither the President, his family, or any of the companies in his
Trump empire business can be held for violating any tax crimes in the
United States.
[[Page S4455]]
How would you like that? Get-out-of-jail-free card. And that was part
of the agreement, and it should be contested.
If we say no one in America is above the law, how in the world can
you justify doing this for the Trump family and their businesses? And
we know this President deals in big numbers when it comes to income.
His first year in office--estimates--between $1.4 and $2 billion in
the President's first year in office of his second term--$2 billion.
How did he do it? Well, you won't be surprised to know that there are
cryptocurrency fingerprints all over this deal.
The President made hundreds of millions of dollars off of a meme coin
or some contraption that comes out of the cryptocurrency world. That is
the reality.
And who was overseeing this operation? Todd Blanche, the man who
wants to be the No. 1 law enforcement officer in the United States of
America.
Well, I will tell you, I am not going to go much longer because I see
some of my colleagues are gathering, and they want to speak on this
issue as well.
This is a serious mistake for the Senate to approve Todd Blanche as
the next Attorney General. If there was ever a moment in history when
we need an Attorney General above reproach who is clearly dedicated to
ending corruption, even at the highest level of our government, it is
right now.
The history of this era will be written, and it will be a shameful
history for those who are empowering this man, Todd Blanche, to take
his personal representation of this President to the highest possible
level as he becomes the next Attorney General.
I beg my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: I think I know
how many of you feel privately, but I know you are afraid to cross this
President. He has been guilty of retribution many times in the past,
and he would be on this. But don't be in the history books on the wrong
side when it comes to this issue. Come out against corruption; come out
for the prosecution of corporate fraud; come out for changing the
current situation in the United States to one that is more respectful
of the law and more respectful of the families and voters who create
this democracy.
I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing the nomination of Todd
Blanche as the next Attorney General of the United States.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I begin with a quote: ``I am his
lawyer.''
``I am his lawyer'' is what Todd Blanche said in the course of his
confirmation hearing for the Judiciary Committee of the U.S.
Senate. "I'm his lawyer,'' meaning, I am Donald Trump's lawyer.
Now, admittedly, he had no intention of saying it that way. He had no
intention of allowing that revelation to slip, but it was a glaring
illustration of his mindset. He was, he is now, and he will be Donald
Trump's lawyer, his personal lawyer, as he was during the criminal and
civil trials--a trusted, loyal consigliere.
He is not an independent lawyer with a law firm; he is in-house. He
is literally kept by the President on his personal leash.
You may think I am overstating it, but, in fact, he demonstrated it
throughout that hearing, and the through line was he will be guided by
blind loyalty to the President and contempt for the law, enabling the
President in continued corrupt crypto schemes, as well as condoning and
empowering the President to establish a slush fund for January 6
rioters, as well as tax immunity. Even though, purportedly, those
agreements were limited, he will enable the President to circumvent the
so-called agreements, which are a sham. They are a fraud on the U.S.
Senate just as Todd Blanche committed a fraud on the Florida U.S.
district court that referred him to the New York bar for investigation
in connection with that wrongdoing.
Maya Angelou famously said:
When people show you who they are, believe them the first
time.
And Todd Blanche has shown us repeatedly who he is, who his boss is,
and whose loyalty he will hold uppermost.
I was a U.S. attorney in Connecticut for 4\1/2\ years, part of the
Department of Justice, which I revered--more than just respected; in
fact, revered--because it epitomized what lawyers should be in
upholding the highest standards of ethics and morality. Even when we
made an error, we were supposed to state it--in effect, acknowledge it
before the court.
I will never forget the first time I appeared before a U.S. district
court judge in Connecticut, a former Federal prosecutor himself. And he
asked me: Whom do you work for?
I said: The government.
He said: No. You work for and you represent the United States of
America.
Think of it for a moment: walking into a courtroom representing the
United States of America, sworn to uphold the Constitution--not any
President, not a legislature, but the United States of America.
That is not what Todd Blanche has done as a Justice Department
official under Donald Trump. It is not what he will do, as he showed
clearly. Nothing epitomizes it better than the answer he gave at one
point when he referred to the attack on the Capitol that occurred on
January 6, 2021--we all remember it; we went through it; we saw it--the
attack on the Capitol which injured and contributed to deaths of our
Capitol Police. He referred to it as ``events.'' He couldn't bring
himself to refer to it as an attack, as it clearly was, because Donald
Trump will not allow any of his nominees to refer to the January 6 riot
and insurrection as an attack on the Capitol. It was an attack designed
to prevent the lawful and peaceful transition of power, and to call it
anything else is disrespectful to the brave Capitol Police who defended
us that day and disqualifying for a judicial nominee and for any
position of trust in the U.S. Government.
Earlier today, I participated in a press conference with some of the
prosecutors--the career prosecutors--who pursued convictions of those
rioters for the serious violations of Federal law that they incurred.
They made the point that the failure to acknowledge an attack on the
Capitol or that President Biden won the 2020 election shows a lack of
independence that should be disqualifying.
They have submitted a letter to all of us here. And I ask unanimous
consent that it be printed in the Record because they make the point
that these statements by nominees for executive office or for
judgeships, in effect, perpetuate the Big Lie.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
August 5, 2026.
To the Members of the United States Senate: We are
attorneys who prosecuted cases related to the events of
January 6, 2021, when thousands of people violently stormed
the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to interrupt the House of
Representatives and the Senate's work to count and certify
the results of the 2020 presidential election.
January 6 was a violent attack on American democracy. It
was also a vicious attack on the brave officers of the U.S.
Capitol Police and Washington Metropolitan Police Department,
more than 150 of whom were injured during the attack, and
five of whom died in its aftermath. Rioters, some of whom
were heavily armed, beat and injured police officers and
reporters, and threatened the lives of the elected officials
and staff members inside, while many rioters stole, damaged,
and destroyed property, obstructed a government proceeding,
and trespassed.
As career public servants dedicated to public safety and
the rule of law, we charged more than 1,500 defendants in
connection with January 6, convicting more than 1,270
(including 1,009 guilty pleas) before our work was halted in
January 2025.
Unfortunately, President Trump has worked to erase the
magnitude and meaning of January 6. On his first day of his
second term in office, Trump commuted the sentences of 14 and
granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all
other people convicted of offenses related to events that
occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6.
Further, since President Trump returned to office in January
of 2025, his judicial nominees, when asked, have been
unwilling to tell the truth about the tragic events of
January 6. None agreed that it was an insurrection, only one
could bring themselves to use the term attack, and not one of
the nearly 60 nominees could acknowledge the full trauma and
suffering that the attackers caused that day.
This institutional denial of truth--especially by potential
federal judges--is dangerous, yet it's become all too clear
that President Trump expects his nominees to provide evasive
answers about both the attack of January 6th, 2021, and the
results of the 2020 presidential election.
No senator, regardless of party, should vote to confirm a
judicial nominee who is
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unable to state the most simple facts about the attack of
January 6, 2021. Specifically, no judicial nominee should be
confirmed if he or she cannot identify that (1) January 6 was
an attack on our democracy, (2) the attack was led by
supporters of Donald Trump, and (3) Joe Biden was
legitimately elected in the 2020 election.
For judges nominated for lifetime seats in the judiciary
branch, this refusal to contradict the President's lies is
particularly dangerous, and raises significant questions
about whether, once confirmed, a nominee could act
independently and free from political interference from the
president that nominated them. The truth matters.
We thank you for your consideration.
Brendan Ballou, Special Counsel, Antitrust Division (2016-
17, 2020-25); Adam Dreher, Assistant United States Attorney,
U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (2022-
2025); Mona Lee M. Furst, Senior Litigation Counsel, United
States Attorney's Office for the District of Kansas (1998-
2022); Alexis Loeb, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S.
Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California
(2013-2024); Jason M. Manning, Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S.
Attorney's Office, District of Columbia (2017-2024); Sean P.
Murphy, Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for
the District of Puerto Rico (2018-2025); Zachary Phillips,
Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for
the District of Colorado (2008-2026); Karen Rochlin,
Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for the
Southern District of Florida, (1989-2025); Michael J. Romano,
Trial Attorney, Crimina Division, Public Integrity Section
(2019-2025); Jacob Steiner, Trial Attorney, Criminal
Division, Public Integrity Section (2020-2025); Andrew J.
Tessman, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's
Office for the Southern District of West Virginia (2019-
2025); Samuel White, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S.
Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (2020-2026).
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Election deniers have no place on the bench or in the
Department of Justice. And, in fact, in response to my submitted
question relating to the 2020 election, Todd Blanche refused to state
that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and he stood by his prior
statements perpetuating the Big Lie.
The through line here is whatever Donald Trump says, Todd Blanche
does. He will do anything, say anything, conceal anything that serves
Donald Trump's interests.
Now, in some ways, the most tragic illustration of this through line
is Todd Blanche's treatment of the Epstein survivors. Let's remember,
he showed us again who he was when he revictimized those survivors by
completely botching the release of the Epstein files. He failed to
redact the survivors' personal information and defied the Epstein Files
Transparency Act by redacting unnecessary information. Why? To shield
Donald Trump.
That was the purpose of the meeting in the Situation Room when the
threat to release additional files was to Donald Trump because he was
mentioned in those files. And the Situation Room meeting, which is
recounted in ``Regime Change,'' a recent book by Jonathan Swan and
Maggie Haberman, showed clearly the effort was not to do justice for
the survivors but to protect Donald Trump.
He refused to meet with the survivors. He spent 2 whole days with
Ghislaine Maxwell. Why? Well, we don't really know because there was
certainly no information useful to any investigation that emerged from
it. What did happen was that she was transferred to a cushy prison camp
and has remained silent.
And when he finally agreed to meet with the survivors, they described
it as demoralizing and degrading. In fact, they called it gaslighting.
He protected Donald Trump at the expense of those survivors, and one
of the most heinous sexual abuse and trafficking rings in American
history has yet to produce the kinds of convictions necessary--the
convictions in court, the prosecutions of the coconspirators and others
complicit and legally responsible. That is not the conduct of an
Attorney General; it is the conduct of Donald Trump's personal lawyer.
I'm his lawyer.
That is the through line. He certainly was acting as Donald Trump's
lawyer when he issued two documents recently, supposedly ending the
contract that was involved in the agreement on Donald Trump's
purported, so-called lawsuit seeking damages from the revelation of his
personal tax information.
We know that two of our colleagues, Senators Cornyn and Tillis, said
that they needed something in writing, but what they got in writing was
virtually meaningless in showing that either the slush fund--the so-
called anti-weaponization fund--or the tax immunity was in any way
materially changed. In fact, the document that purported to say that
the slush fund was dead, in reality, is a sham. It is a fraud on the
U.S. Senate, just as he allegedly committed a fraud on the court in
Florida.
The reason is quite simply that there was a contract here. The
agreement produced that contract. The agreement was between Donald
Trump and the United States. Donald Trump did not in any way forgo or
renounce any rights under that contract. It is still binding. He could
go into court tomorrow and force it to establish the $1.8 billion thug
fund.
And, likewise, the immunity agreement, which is unprecedented, worth
hundreds of millions of dollars to Donald Trump, tax immunity from
audits, in effect giving him a free pass for everything that occurred
before this immunity, negotiated by Todd Blanche with only Todd
Blanche's signature on it--the limiting of that immunity from tax
audits to Donald Trump, his sons, his organization, worth hundreds of
millions--unprecedented, unconscionable, and unacceptable from an
Attorney General of the United States, dealing with potential tax
violations of law, signing away tax liability no matter how serious it
might be. It is unprecedented, and no one else but the President would
even think of trying to get it in this way, under these circumstances.
And he was able to get it only because Todd Blanche acted as his
personal lawyer, not as Attorney General of the United States.
Senator Cornyn himself put it well at the hearing about this contract
for the slush fund:
To be clear, the President of the United States, who was
the plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to
delete the weaponization fund, and there's no guarantee that
he or one of the other plaintiffs might raise that issue by
way of a breach of contract lawsuit in the future.
Todd Blanche answered in the affirmative. He well knows that the
document that he prepared and released does nothing to change that
contractual obligation.
The conversation that Todd Blanche had recently, talking to
individuals interested in reproductive rights, I think is extremely
revealing and important. In a private call just last week, he said the
quiet part out loud; that he would work to restrict abortion in every
single State all across the country.
He wants to block States enacting their own policies and laws. He
wants to make abortion-access States follow the laws of abortion-ban
States. In short, he wants to strip Americans of their right to choose
and strip States of their right to govern. That is not the conduct or
statement of an Attorney General of the United States carrying out and
respecting the Constitution; it is fidelity to an ideologue--the
President--who wants to impress his base, not represent the American
people.
Todd Blanche showed us who he was when he ducked and dodged my
question about deep-sixing an investigation into possible pay-to-play
commutation of a federally convicted felon, David Gentile. David
Gentile reportedly paid $2.5 million to a broker to obtain clemency.
That clemency robbed his victims of nearly $16 million in restitution.
When a U.S. attorney tried to investigate--the Eastern District of New
York, U.S. attorney--Mr. Blanche reportedly killed the probe. That is
not the behavior of an Attorney General; that is Donald Trump's
personal lawyer.
So there is a powerful case against this nominee. I am under no
illusion. We have seen this movie before. We saw it again when my two
colleagues in effect caved--voted for his nomination yesterday. I am
not here with rose-colored glasses. I know that Donald Trump will come
down hard on any Republican colleague who has the temerity to say: We
want a lawyer who represents the people, a lawyer who has fidelity to
the Constitution and to the United States of America above the
President, an Attorney General who will follow the law and insist that
no one is above the law and no one is beneath it, an Attorney General
who is true to the trust that we expect and to respect.
Todd Blanche might be the President's lawyer, but we don't have to be
[[Page S4457]]
the President's Senate. I urge my colleagues to vote against this
confirmation and remain true to what we should be in upholding the
trust and the Constitution of the United States.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the nomination
of Todd Blanche to serve as Attorney General of the United States.
The Attorney General is supposed to be the people's lawyer, someone
whose loyalty is to the Constitution and to the rule of law, not to any
one person--even the President of the United States. But in this
administration, the Attorney General and the Department of Justice are
focused solely on pleasing one person, one man, no matter the cost to
our country.
Lest anybody forget, huge banners like the one displayed here hang
outside the Department of Justice, the front door, as pictured here,
and the other entrance to the Department of Justice. Every single day,
the folks who are supposed to uphold our Constitution and the rule of
law walk beneath these banners, reminding them that in this
administration, their loyalty is to Donald Trump, not to the people of
the United States. One of the people who do that every day and who have
demonstrated loyalty to the President over the Constitution is the
person whose nomination is pending on this floor today to be the
Attorney General.
It is crystal clear from Mr. Blanche's record as Acting Attorney
General and before that as Deputy Attorney General that he is still
acting like Donald Trump's personal lawyer--a position he held before
going to the Justice Department. His record has shown us very clearly
that he will continue to put the President's personal interests above
the interests of the American people; that when he walks through that
door to the great Department of Justice that is supposed to serve
justice for the American people, he looks up and he sees Donald Trump.
He was formerly the personal lawyer to Donald Trump, and even now, at
the Justice Department, he continues to demonstrate that he puts the
President's interests above those in the Constitution and the rule of
law.
The Department of Justice has used taxpayer dollars to punish the
President's adversaries, to reward his friends, and to pursue the
President's personal vendettas.
In a case that I am very familiar with, a Federal judge found that
Mr. Blanche's statements about the Department's case against Kilmar
Abrego Garcia showed clear evidence of a vindictive prosecution. In
other words, the judge found that Todd Blanche and the Department of
Justice brought a case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a Federal court
because he had exercised his due process rights, to punish him for
exercising his rights, so that judge threw out those charges.
Under Mr. Blanche's leadership, Department lawyers have resigned
rather than participate in blatant prosecutions, like the prosecutions
of James Comey and others.
Career, professional lawyers have resigned rather than participate in
abuses of power, like the Department's criminal investigation against
Renee Good's partner after the shooting in Minneapolis instead of
holding accountable or pursuing accountability for those who killed
Renee Good. Think about that. This Department of Justice launched an
investigation into the partner of Renee Good, who was shot and killed
by DHS agents, instead of investigating the shooting itself--again, to
please the dear leader in the White House, not to uphold the rule of
law.
We also know that the Department of Justice has lost 10,000 employees
since the beginning of fiscal year 2025 and nearly one quarter of its
lawyers--lawyers who signed up to uphold the rule of law and the
Constitution, not serve the dear leader acting through the dear
leader's former personal attorney Todd Blanche. Now they are hiring
prosecutors with no prior legal experience and asking many of them to
sign a pledge supporting not the Constitution but the President of the
United States.
We have seen how Mr. Blanche has acted as the President's personal
lawyer since he has been at the Justice Department. We know, of course,
of the outrageous $1.8 billion slush fund that was created to make
payments to the President's political allies. When I asked Mr. Blanche
at a hearing if those who assaulted police officers here on Capitol
Hill on January 6 would be eligible for those payouts, taxpayer-funded
payouts, he wouldn't rule it out. He wouldn't rule that out.
At the same time, he and the Department entered into a sweetheart
settlement providing extraordinary tax liability protections to the
President and his family and his businesses--essentially a get-out-of-
jail-free card for nonpayment of taxes due if that was what had been
ultimately found.
Now, after Republican Senators and only after Republican Senators
threatened to block his nomination did Mr. Blanche issue an order
supposedly rescinding the slush fund and narrowing the scope of those
tax protections.
By the way, even if you narrow the scope the way it is supposed to
there, the President and his family get essentially a get-out-of-jail-
free card for past tax liabilities that may be due.
So this deal is a sham. It is not worth the paper it is written on.
It is not written into the law, and nothing prevents the Department
from restarting the slush fund once Mr. Blanche is confirmed.
That is not the only example of Mr. Blanche continuing to serve as
the President's personal attorney while having the title of ``Acting
Attorney General.'' We also see that in his handling of the Epstein
files.
During his time at the Justice Department, Mr. Blanche has withheld
critical information regarding those files rather than seek justice for
the brave survivors who have shared their stories of abuse by Jeffrey
Epstein and his associates.
When Mr. Blanche appeared before the Appropriations subcommittee
overseeing the Department of Justice, Senator Murray and I both asked
him that if we connected him with the Epstein survivors, would he meet
with them and hear them out?
His answer:
Absolutely.
He promised he would do so if we connected the survivors to him.
Well, we followed up multiple times. Nearly 2 months later, he had
not fulfilled the promise he made in that Senate committee hearing. He
had still not met with the survivors.
So Senator Murray and I wrote him a letter demanding that he fulfill
the promise he made because that should be a bare minimum for someone
seeking this post. And it is pretty clear he had zero intent on keeping
the promise made in public at that committee hearing until Senator
Tillis said that he would not vote to move his nomination out of the
committee until Mr. Blanche met with the survivors.
After that threat was made, the meeting happened, but it was clear
from reports about the meeting by the survivors that Mr. Blanche did
not do so out of respect for them and out of a genuine interest to hear
what they had to say but simply to preserve chances of his
confirmation, because according to the survivors, it was nothing more
than a check-the-box exercise. In fact, they said Mr. Blanche was
condescending, that he was rude, and that he was dismissive. They were
interrupted and told to ``get to the point.''
Well, someone who can tell the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's
horrific crimes to ``get to the point'' is not a person we want
defending the American people because a nominee for Attorney General
should demonstrate that their loyalty will be to the Constitution and
the rule of law and getting justice for everybody in America, including
the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, not to the President of the
United States.
So I hope we will recognize that if we look at the conduct and
actions and record of the Acting Attorney General, we will recognize
that he is not suited for this position because his record shows he has
not been upholding the rule of law and the Constitution. Instead, he
has been doing the business of this one man.
This photo was taken today--taken today. These big banners of Donald
Trump have been hanging outside the Department of Justice for a long
time, and they send an unmistakable message to people who work inside
that they better serve the interests of this
[[Page S4458]]
one person. If, instead, there is a conflict between the interests of
the people of the United States and this person, this tells them: Serve
the interests of the President of the United States.
That is not the job of the Department of Justice, and it is not the
job of the Attorney General.
I urge my colleagues to oppose the nomination of Todd Blanche to be
Attorney General of the United States.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I listened to the presentation by my
colleague from Maryland and agree with everything he said.
And the heart of the question is whether the person who has been
nominated to serve as Attorney General will serve the people of the
United States or will he serve the President to whom he has indicated
blind, complete, servile loyalty?
And the recitation of facts about what Mr. Blanche has done in this
incredibly important job as Acting Attorney General has made clear what
his client is, who that client is.
There is no place at the top of the Justice Department for a person
who pledges personal loyalty to anyone other than the American people.
But, you know, the reality here is, the President won't appoint anybody
to the Attorney General's position who won't act as his personal
attorney.
And there is a sadness that I have about this whole story that is
before us. It is the story of a person who when he was a young man, a
young attorney, Todd Blanche was extraordinarily talented, was very
idealistic, was a prosecutor's prosecutor, and who did abide by and
uphold the rule of law.
He became a new person in service of a President that I believe is
corrupt. Two billion dollars of income to the President of the United
States in his first year raises more than a mild question.
And this person now to be Attorney General, in his Acting Attorney
General role, essentially provided tax immunity to the President and to
all of his children, family, and affiliates. It is totally outrageous.
When you say it, you can't even believe the words are coming out of
your mouth. It is absolutely unprecedented.
It has nothing to do with the way public business should be
conducted. But Mr. Blanche, who has considerable talents, has used
those talents to enable and to facilitate and to cover up and to revise
and accommodate the corrupt goals of a President who, I believe, is
corrupt.
And, by the way, as I mentioned earlier, that is whom the President
wants. He wants someone who is going to do his work for him
unquestioned, no matter what. But, you know, there is another question
that belongs right here in the U.S. Senate. Is there no line that the
U.S. Senate will not allow this President to cross?
The Senate confirmed Bondi; it confirmed Hegseth; it confirmed Patel;
it confirmed Noem; and we are about to confirm Blanche. The President
is abusing his authority, in my view, in every day and in every way.
And that is shame on him, but the U.S. Senate is failing to use its
authority, its power on any day or in any way. Shame on the U.S.
Senate.
Should not the U.S. Senate use its advice and consent authority to
demand competence and integrity? Did the Senate do that with Bondi,
with Noem, with Hegseth, with Patel, and now with Blanche? Should not
the U.S. Senate use its taxing authority to stop tariffs that the vast
majority of this body believes is hurting the American people and is
not the right of the Executive to impose?
Should not the U.S. Senate use its constitutional power of the purse
to stop the invasion by President Trump into the power of the purse?
And should not the U.S. Senate use its constitutional authority over
the awesome power to declare war and stop this illegal war in Iran
that, in fact, President Trump is losing?
The President is abusing his authority. We are failing to use ours.
We can stop capitulating today by rejecting this nomination.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here today to join the chorus of
opposition to Todd Blanche's nomination as Attorney General of the
United States.
Things that Republicans have purported to care about are disastrous
with this guy. Pam Bondi put the blame directly on Todd Blanche for the
Department of Justice's foulup with the Epstein files.
That foulup was pretty deadly serious for the women who were victims,
who had managed to keep that fact private until Todd Blanche and the
DOJ fouled that up and put out their names, put out their addresses,
put out their photographs, and in some cases put out photographs with
very little clothing on--complete disruption of the lives of the
victims of Epstein's depravity, complete incompetence from a document-
production point of view.
And on the other side, this guy actually participated in the Epstein
coverup. Remember that there was a witness who spoke to FBI agents
about having been assaulted by Donald Trump when she was about 14 years
old, physically assaulted and sexually assaulted.
She spoke to the FBI at least four times. Those four times were
recorded in FBI 302s. A 302 is the FBI name for the witness statement
that the agents write up after an interview.
So four times this woman has been interviewed about what had happened
to her as a girl. Three of those 302s specifically mentioned Donald
Trump. In the disclosure that Todd Blanche made under the Epstein files
law, the only one of the four that got disclosed was the one that
didn't mention Donald Trump.
That ought to be disqualifying right there. Luckily, some very sharp
investigators realized through, like, gaps in Bates stamp numbers that
documents were missing and that the three 302s had not been disclosed.
And so Blanche was forced to cough those up.
But behind a 302 come the agent notes. And there are still 37 pages
of documents relating to that that are still suppressed, that are still
covered up, that look to be the agents' notes, which should have been
disclosed. So the coverup continued with respect to allegations against
Donald Trump. Where else did the coverup continue?
Well, the Treasury Department sent to the Department of Justice what
are called suspicious activity reports. A suspicious activity report is
what you get when international banking transactions look like
something funny is afoot, look like there is, for instance, money
laundering going on. In this case, it was money laundering and human-
trafficking concerns that provoked the suspicious activity reports.
You don't have to be a genius investigator to look at a suspicious
activity report and deduce it might have something to do with some
suspicious activity. It is the title of the report, for Pete's sake.
Billions of dollars of transactions were behind those suspicious
activity reports. How many were investigated by the Blanche Department
of Justice? Zero. Turned a complete blind eye to that whole aspect of
the Epstein files, even though the suspicious activity reports were
right in front of them.
And then he goes running down to Tallahassee to interview Epstein's
comrade-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell. Did he use that interview to
develop any new information, to go after people who were culpable in
the Epstein files? No.
He used that interview to extract exculpatory comments from her about
Donald Trump. Oh, that he was a perfect gentleman. And the next thing
you know, she is rewarded with a transfer to a Club Fed-type prison.
What is the excuse for that? Oh, she was at risk. We felt she was in
danger. Well, look, I have been around law enforcement for a long time,
and this is the first time I have ever seen a prisoner allegedly in
danger be transferred to a less secure setting to solve the problem of
danger. Right? You move the prisoner to a more secure setting, not a
less secure setting. It makes no sense. So in the Epstein files, Todd
Blanche's fingerprints are all over the screwup and the coverup. Then
we move on to the slush fund and the Trump family tax fraud amnesty,
which was cooked up in a deal surrounding a Federal court proceeding,
which was such a mess that the judge in that Federal court proceeding
has gone back to look at what the heck happened.
[[Page S4459]]
She was looking at whether something happened called fraud upon the
court. You probably haven't heard of fraud upon the court. It is
unusually rare. It is a thermonuclear ethics accusation. We have
looked. In the history of the Department of Justice, fraud on the court
has not even been alleged against any senior DOJ official--ever. Ever.
And here you have a court that opened a proceeding, an inquiry, into
whether or not there was fraud on the court, and that is still pending.
There is still every reason to believe that Blanche may be found
culpable for putting a fraud on the court together to cook up the slush
fund tax amnesty scheme. That is pretty unheard of.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon in this Blanche Department of
Justice. There is a cascade of criticism from Federal courts about
misconduct by this Department of Justice--misconduct that is
unprecedented.
I will tell you that I was the U.S. attorney for the District of
Rhode Island. If judges had used words like this about my attorneys'
conduct in their courtrooms, there would have been consequences. At a
minimum, there would have been staff meetings. There could have been
referrals to the Office of Professional Responsibility. There could
have been apologies required to the court. There could have been a
reboot, internal office discipline of what is going on with this case.
But when a judge says that the government's argument is disingenuous,
when the judge says that the government's argument is a pretext for
something else, when the judge says that the government has engaged in
bad faith, each one of those is a four-alarm fire word.
In medicine, there are things that they call never events, things
that should never happen in a hospital that you protect against, these
are never event words coming from Federal judges. And yet they are
commonplace in the corrupted Department of Justice run by Todd Blanche.
As to his complicity in the Epstein files coverup, I ask unanimous
consent that a letter from Epstein survivors to Senators Tillis and
Cornyn be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.
With respect to the destruction of the Department of Justice that he
has wrought, I would also ask that we add George Will's column called
``Against Todd Blanche.''
I ask unanimous consent that the article entitled ``Against Todd
Blanche'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, July 24, 2026]
Against Todd Blanche
(By George F. Will)
What benefit of norms is owed to someone who disdains
norms? There are many sufficient reasons to oppose confirming
Todd Blanche as attorney general. Presidents generally are
owed some deference in selecting Cabinet members, but
``some'' implies limits, lest the Senate's advice-and-consent
duty be drained of responsibility. And not all presidents are
equally owed. Today's president is owed little, given his
contempt for the unwritten rules of civility that can
lubricate a congenial society's governance.
Eight days after the 2024 election, Donald Trump set the
tone of his second term by announcing his beau ideal of an
attorney general: Rep. Matt Gaetz. This insult lasted eight
days, until Gaetz withdrew as nominee. He had resigned from
the House earlier, reportedly to prevent release of the House
Ethics Committee's report on his alleged drug use and sexual
misconduct, which a woman said included sex with her twice
when she was 17.
Trump settled for Pam Bondi as attorney general, with
Blanche as her deputy. While Blanche was the Justice
Department's second-in-command, the U.S. attorney for the
District of Columbia, a Justice appendage, sought criminal
indictments of six congressional Democrats, all with military
or intelligence backgrounds. They had made a video.
Made while Trump's administration was killing people on
boats (in international waters) suspected of carrying drugs,
the video said what the Uniform Code of Military Justice
says: Do not obey illegal orders. A grand jury did something
vanishingly rare in criminal cases. It refused to indict the
six.
Blanche was acting attorney general when the Justice
Department took seriously Seashellgate. His department
secured a second indictment of former FBI director James B.
Comey, this time for posting a photograph of shells arranged
on a beach to read ``86 47''; ``86'' is slang for ``remove.''
Trump is the 47th-president. Blanche's DOJ pretended to
regard Comey's infantile gesture as a prosecutable threat.
Republican senators now have demanded Blanche's assurances
that the proposed $1.776 billion slush fund, for compensating
persons Trump designates as victims of Biden administration
persecution, is dead. But this grift was incubated in
Blanche's DOJ.
Blanche, who serves at the pleasure of the president,
signed a memo pledging that the IRS is ``Forever Barred''
from ``examinations'' of Trump, certain members of his
family, the Trump Organization and ``related or affiliated
individuals.'' This ``negotiated''--try not to snicker--
settlement between the president and the executive branch he
heads exemplifies the administration's sludge of self-
dealing.
Trump sicced Blanche's compliant Justice Department on
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, ostensibly about
fictitious criminality in construction spending, actually to
pressure Powell to resign. With Blanche as deputy, then
acting, attorney general, the Justice Department (per the
Economist) gave courts inaccurate information ``nearly 100
times in Mr Trump's first 14 months.''
popular articles
In April, Blanche became acting attorney general when Trump
fired Bondi. ``Nobody has any idea why,'' said Blanche.
Plausible reports said Trump considered Bondi insufficiently
aggressive about prosecuting his enemies. Blanche has said,
cloudily, that ``some'' Justice Department prosecutions
``involve men, women, and entities'' that Trump ``has had
issues with. . . . That is his right, and indeed it is his
duty to do that, meaning, to lead this country.''
Blanche said it is ``completely false'' that the president
targets political enemies. Trump merely ``wants justice.''
Blanche said he was not ``celebrating'' Trump's pardons of
almost all the approximately 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters when, to a
gathering of Trump supporters, he praised the ``generous''
pardons as one of the administration's accomplishments.
If at most four Republican senators had, in committee or
floor votes, behaved as independently as the Founders thought
senators would, Bondi, Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete
Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others would not have been
confirmed to offices far above their competences. Children
probably have died of measles, and of hepatitis B passed from
mothers to infants, because of vaccine hesitancy promoted by
Kennedy, who lied when he promised not to indulge in such
quackery if confirmed as secretary of Health and Human
Services.
Now comes Blanche. He received this embarrassingly
backhanded endorsement (in the Wall Street Journal) from
former attorney general William Barr: Blanche ``will run the
department as effectively as anyone could under President
Trump.'' Is this sufficient reassurance for Republican
senators? Or will, at last, a nominee trigger their gag
reflexes?
Once, when someone noted that Sen. Richard Russell, the
Georgia Democrat, had ``served under'' six presidents,
Russell bristled, saying he ``served with'' six. It will be a
pleasant surprise if, concerning Blanche, a few Republican
senators become similarly sensitive about those prepositions.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And with respect to this litany of criticism of the
honesty of the Blanche Department of Justice, I would like to add a
ProPublica article entitled ``Federal Judges Chastise Trump's Justice
Department for `Unlawful,' `Unethical' and `Unseemly' Conduct,'' whose
first sentence begins:
Across the country, federal judges are calling out
Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented
ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold
centuries-old legal norms.
I ask unanimous consent that the article entitled ``Federal Judges
Chastise Trump's Justice Department for `Unlawful,' `Unethical' and
`Unseemly' Conduct'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Federal Judges Chastise Trump's Justice Department for ``Unlawful,''
``Unethical'' and ``Unseemly'' Conduct
(By J. David McSwane, Pratheek Rebala, and Carla Astudillo)
Across the country, federal judges are calling out
Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented
ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold
centuries-old legal norms.
From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal
judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including
Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what's called ``the
presumption of regularity.'' It essentially means that judges
must presume that the government--whether it be federal
prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent--did their jobs
according to the rules and in good faith.
Until Trump's second term, which has seen an exodus of
veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities
from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending
a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely
been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers
and scholars say. But as Trump's DOJ exhibits behavior that
judges have called ``unlawful,'' ``unethical,'' ``unseemly''
or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is
now being questioned.
[[Page S4460]]
ProPublica reviewed hundreds of cases since Trump retook
the White House in which judges criticized the actions of DOJ
lawyers and found more than 40 in which they explicitly
referenced the presumption of regularity. In many cases,
judges have expressed frustration that they can no longer
take the government at its word.
``Judges simply don't believe the representations that are
being made by United States attorneys, assistant United
States attorneys and the like,'' said John E. Jones, a former
federal judge for the District of Pennsylvania, appointed by
President George W. Bush.
``I don't think in the annals of the Department of Justice,
in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we've
ever seen anything close to this.''
In Rhode Island in May, Trump-appointed federal Judge Mary
McElroy rebuked federal prosecutors' conduct--saying they
withheld information and misrepresented facts--as she quashed
their requests for a subpoena in their investigation into a
hospital's care of transgender children. The judge alleged
the DOJ had inappropriately claimed its investigation was
operating out of Texas to secure subpoenas targeting
sensitive medical records of patients in another state and
that it falsely claimed the Rhode Island hospital hadn't
communicated with the department.
``The discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of
federal prosecutors and DOJ's tactics in this case is
unsettling,'' McElroy wrote. ``The Court cannot help but
share the sentiment that `[t]he presumption of regularity
that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be
taken at its word--with little doubt about its intentions and
stated purposes--no longer holds.' ''
Judges have emitted a chorus of condemnations against the
legal basis for some of Trump's political agenda, including
the mass firings of federal workers, an immigration dragnet
that has imprisoned hundreds of U.S. citizens and retribution
campaigns against the president's political enemies.
In doing so, federal judges are imbuing forceful language
into their orders in a way that scholars say signals to the
Trump administration that the third branch of government is
losing trust in the Justice Department.
Federal judges rarely grant interviews, and none of the
judges who criticized the Justice Department in their orders
granted interviews to ProPublica.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the DOJ said its
attorneys are ``dedicated public servants who represent the
United States with integrity, in accordance with their
ethical obligations and the law.''
``The Department stands firmly behind the professionalism
and good faith of its attorneys,'' said spokesperson Kiersten
Pels. The White House did not respond to a request for
comment.
Federal judges have found that the government filed
statements generated by artificial intelligence that
referenced nonexistent case law, wrote briefs that ignored
facts and filed declarations with inaccurate dates, the
ProPublica review shows.
In one case, the government included documentation claiming
a detainee had been convicted of marijuana possession in
2009. That detainee, the judge noted, citing what she called
the government's persistent ``sloppiness,'' would have been 4
years old.
``This Court will no longer blindly accept statements of
fact from [the U.S. government] unless they are made under
oath by an individual with personal knowledge,'' Judge
Christine O'Hearn, a President Joe Biden appointee, wrote in
New Jersey while reviewing a writ of habeas corpus petition
filed by a man who claimed he was unlawfully imprisoned by
immigration officers. O'Hearn accused the government of
defying her orders when, instead of releasing the man,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred him to a
different facility in New York.
In Minnesota, the state's top political leaders had
publicly clashed with the administration following the
violent ICE raids that led to the deaths of two U.S.
citizens. Then the administration filed a flurry of subpoenas
against them.
Last month, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, who was appointed by
George W. Bush and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia, slammed the government's actions and ``spurious
claims,'' saying the presumption of regularity was being
abused.
``Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass
political opponents or to coerce them into taking official
action--particularly official action that the federal
government cannot directly require those political opponents
to take--is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use [of] the
grand-jury process,'' the judge wrote.
``Breakdown'' of a Presumption
The presumption of regularity creates a high bar for those
suing the government or defending themselves against it in
criminal cases. They often must provide evidence that the
government willfully violated a policy or otherwise deviated
from its charge--that is, did something irregular--to
overcome the standard.
It's a shield the government wields often, with little
notice, and one that is almost always successful. But
overcoming that presumption has become increasingly common
under Trump's second term, according to court watchers.
About half of the cases ProPublica identified as
questioning the presumption come from districts, including
D.C., Maryland and Virginia, where by proximity and
jurisdiction many of Trump's actions are challenged and often
heard by Democratic-nominated judges. The Southern District
of New York, which has issued repeated rebukes of Trump
administration actions, and the Northern District of
California, another Democratic stronghold, are other hotbeds
of judicial scrutiny.
Last September, D.C. District Magistrate Judge Zia M.
Faruqui accused the administration of working around the
federal grand jury process, getting an indictment from a
state court after prosecutors had failed to get one in his
court, which he called ``unseemly,'' if not ``unlawful.'' He
fired off one of the earliest signs that the presumption
itself could come into question.
``This only deepens the growing mistrust of the actions of
prosecutors,'' the judge wrote. ``That is a sentiment that
was once unthinkable, but the irregular is now the regular.''
While the case was largely managed by assistant U.S. attorney
Caelainn Carney, according to court transcripts, Faruqui was
aiming his frustration at her bosses, including senior
prosecutor Jonathan R. Hornok, and the leadership at DOJ.
Neither attorney responded to requests for comment.
Pels, the DOJ spokesperson, told ProPublica that Faruqui
``was wrong on the law'' and noted that after the government
appealed to the district's chief judge, his order was
overruled. ``Judge Faruqui has a long-standing documented
pattern of editorializing from the bench beyond the scope of
the cases before him,'' Pels added.
But in recent months, skepticism about the presumption has
also come from judges appointed by Republicans, such as
McElroy, or in GOP strongholds.
In Indiana, Trump-appointed federal Judge James Patrick
Hanlon ordered the release of Salah Sarsour, president of the
Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a lawful U.S. resident, from
ICE custody in March. Sarsour's lawyers argued the government
had targeted him to suppress his First Amendment right to
free speech. The DOJ invoked the presumption of regularity
and argued his arrest was part of an anti-terrorism dragnet,
which the judge threw out.
In the Southern District of Ohio, Judge Michael R. Barrett,
appointed by George W. Bush, ordered ICE to release a
detainee after concluding the presumption had been overcome
because the government hadn't presented a reasonable argument
that the man was a flight risk.
News outlets, including CNN, have documented federal
judges' ire with Trump's DOJ, and some of the cases under
question have been well-publicized, such as the government's
illegal deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia
to El Salvador. In that case, Judge Paula Xinis, a President
Barack Obama appointee, criticized the government, saying,
``You have taken the presumption of regularity, and you've
destroyed it.''
Many of the rulings challenged one of Trump's hallmark
efforts: immigration enforcement and deportations.
``The presumption of regularity and integrity previously
and routinely afforded to the Executive branch and the United
States Attorney's Office has been undeniably eroded in this
jurisdiction and across the country,'' O'Hearn wrote in
February, noting that the federal government had repeatedly
violated court orders in her district and others related to
immigration operations.
In another immigration detention case, this one in
Washington state, Biden-appointed Judge Lauren King sail,
``[t]he `presumption of regularity' is dislodged here by the
numerous factual errors in Respondents' filings and by their
conflicting representations.''
Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial
Institute and a former federal judge from California, said
what's happening in the courts feels more like a ``political
conflict'' than the normal ebb and flow of the justice
system.
``It's really one branch that is really sort of questioning
the legitimacy of the other one,'' Fogel said. ``I think the
judges are trying to stand up for the legitimacy of their
branch''
Just Security, an online law and policy journal, has been
tracking cases in which federal judges have admonished
Trump's prosecutors, including those involving the
presumption.
``We're witnessing a breakdown in the ways in which any
administration ordinarily carries out its responsibilities,
through the Justice Department in particular,'' said Ryan
Goodman, Just Security's co-editor-in-chief.
Erosion of Trust, Ethics Inquiries
The erosion of trust from the federal bench comes as Trump
has profoundly shifted priorities at the DOJ to align with
his political platform: ending civil rights and diversity
programs, deporting immigrants and stripping away
environmental protections.
Those who deal with DOJ lawyers have noticed the difference
in court.
Mitch Bernard, chief counsel at the nonprofit Natural
Resources Defense Council, has faced off on environmental
issues with the DOJ many times. Although they may disagree,
he said, he always expected his opponents to be ``fair and
above board.''
That dynamic is gone, he said.
``I would call it a transformation of the role of the
Justice Department,'' he said. ``There are many different
judges in different
[[Page S4461]]
jurisdictions not only ruling against the government but
calling the government out for dishonesty and dissembling,
and that's an extraordinary thing.''
The result, Bernard said, is that ``the government will
lose more cases as a result of the way the Justice Department
is behaving.''
Meanwhile, groups such as his are benefitting from the
government brain drain. ``We hired 10 litigating attorneys
last year,'' he said. Of those, eight came from the DOJ.
Judges aren't just losing faith in the DOJ. Some are
pushing to sanction Justice Department lawyers.
This month, Miami federal Judge Kathleen M. Williams ruled
that Trump's lawsuit against the IRS was an improper exercise
in self-enrichment, citing the president's lawyers for a
series of misstatements in the case.
The Obama appointee referred the lawyer who brought the
president's case against the IRS, Alejandro Brito, to the
Florida Bar for potential disciplinary proceedings. She also
forwarded her ruling to disciplinary officials in New York,
who had earlier received an ethics complaint about acting
Attorney General Todd Blanche.
A DOJ spokesperson called the Blanche case ``nothing more
than a politically motivated bar complaint, filed by partisan
activists who disagree with this Administration's policies.''
Brito did not respond to a request for comment.
In Rhode Island, McElroy referred DOJ lawyers to a review
board for possible discipline for their handling of the
hospital investigation.
``As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when
wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or
certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be
honest with its counterparts and the judiciary,'' McElroy
wrote. ``DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point
in this case.''
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And then this isn't just a problem in American legal
communities. There is a global magazine called The Economist magazine,
which, by the way, does not run liberal. It is a fairly conservative
publication.
The cover story in the July 18 The Economist is a picture of the
Department of Justice logo and the title ``Degradation in progress.''
I ask that The Economist magazine article--there are actually two.
One is the opening article that they lead with before they get to the
main article; and the second is the main article--the two articles
about the degradation of the Department of Justice under Todd Blanche
be added to the Record as well.
I ask unanimous consent that the articles entitled ``Degradation in
progress'' and ``The rule of one'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[The Economist, July 18th 2026]
Degradation in Progress
The pursuit of enemies grabs all the attention, and for
good reason. Markets were shocked to see President Donald
Trump set the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Jerome Powell
when he was still the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Champions of press freedom cried foul last week when the
department issued subpoenas to New York Times journalists for
explaining the truth about Qatar's gift of a jet to the
president. But Mr. Trump's grievance agenda isn't the half of
it.
In a sign of how much he treats the department as his own
personal law firm, he wants his actual lawyer to become
attorney-general. Senate hearings begin this week for Todd
Blanche, who is currently the acting attorney-general. Those
on Mr. Trump's enemies list are not the only ones who should
be worried. The president is also inflicting less-noticed
harms on the DOJ that are as bad as the attention-grabbing
ones. The damage is likely to be profound.
The DOJ is the government's lawyer, but it also serves as
the guardian of the law, especially since Watergate. In 2019
Bill Barr, then Mr. Trump's pick for attorney-general, said
that Americans ``have to know that there are places in the
government where the rule of law--not politics--holds sway''
and that the Department of Justice ``must be such a place''.
Mr. Trump has no time for that. Less than halfway through his
second term, he has turned the DOJ from an arm of the law
into a muscular limb of the presidency (see United States
section).
For a start, he has dramatically redefined the department's
priorities, which is legitimate, often by setting goals that
blur policy and politics, which is not. Health-care fraud is
being chased with particular zeal in states run by Democrats,
such as California and Minnesota, where it can be used to
discredit Mr. Trump's opponents, including the states'
governors, Gavin Newson and Tim Walz.
The DOJ is also an effective tool for pursing his political
agenda. Election fraud is consuming ever more of its
resources--not because it is a real problem, but because it
is a presidential obsession. The DOJ has sued states for
access to their voter rolls. In January the FBI seized
hundreds of boxes filled with ballots and other documents in
Georgia's most populous county, part of an investigation of
the presidential election in 2020. More recently, some 260
FBI analysts were dispatched to pore over Georgia's files,
with a deadline to review records by July 17th. At the very
least, this will shake voters' faith that elections are
trustworthy--indeed, that may be its sinister design.
Matters of genuine public interest are left to languish.
About a quarter of the DOJ's lawyers have left. Divisions
that investigated cryptocurrency fraud and public corruption
have withered. Financial-fraud indictments by prosecutors at
DOJ headquarters and in Manhattan are down by 30% from the
ten-year average. About 300 special agents who specialise in
national security have quit the FBI, taking decades of
experience in counterterrorism and cyber-warfare with them.
The department has also become more chaotic. Too often,
cases encounter problems in court, though it is hard to
distinguish sloppiness by DOJ staff from deliberate ill-
intent. Nearly 100 times in Mr. Trump's first 14 months, the
DOJ supplied courts with inaccurate information. It is quite
something for the State to lose the benefit of the doubt in
its own courtrooms.
More than 61,000 petitions from detained immigrants have
bogged down courts and frustrated judges and federal
prosecutors, who have moved lawyers from criminal divisions
to help. By September last year, about a fifth of FBI agents
had been diverted to immigration enforcement.
Meanwhile, the president's powers are increasing. In Trump
v Slaughter last month the Supreme Court ruled that the
president could sack leaders of semi-independent agencies,
such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC). That gives the president the
capacity to force agencies to work in league with the DOJ.
Imagine a co-ordinated campaign of pressure, in which the DOJ
opens an antitrust inquiry, the FTC explores consumer fraud
and the SEC investigates corporate disclosures.
Unfortunately, the permanent appointment of Mr. Blanche is
unlikely to mark an improvement. He has done as much as
anyone to advance Mr. Trump's agenda of prosecuting his
enemies and protecting his friends--a powerful combination
for encouraging people to comply with Mr. Trump's wishes.
Under Mr. Blanche, the DOJ has recently threatened state
election officials with criminal prosecution if they
knowingly let non-citizens remain on voting rolls.
Democrats and more than 1,200 former DOJ lawyers have
demanded that the Senate reject Mr. Blanche's nomination. The
Senate now has the choice of confirming him, and thereby
seeming to endorse Mr. Trump's broader agenda, or blocking
him in a rare rebuke to the president. Unfortunately, a
rejection may not accomplish all that much. Mr. Trump can
retain Mr. Blanche as acting attorney-general for months or
nominate someone just as pliable.
The best Americans can hope for, in the next two years, is
that courts stand firm. So far they have generally checked
the DOJ's worst impulses. On July 7th a federal judge blocked
the department's effort to subpoena the names of election of
workers in Georgia. On July 13th another federal judge
nullified a settlement organised by the DOJ in response to a
civil case brought by Mr. Trump that would have protected the
president and his family from tax audits.
In the dock
Even if Americans elect a president who wants to restore
the DOJ, the damage will be hard to reverse. Mr. Trump's
acolytes would see the ejection of his partisan lawyers as a
witch hunt that justifies the next purge when they take back
power. Once the arrival of any new administration routinely
entails a fresh round of sackings, professionals who care
about the rule of law will think twice about signing up.
After Watergate, statesmanship and a bipartisan effort were
needed to create the modern DOJ. Today the stakes are as
high, and the task is harder.
____
The Rule of One
Anyone who has ever worked as a lawyer for Donald Trump
makes a bet. There is the possibility that you, too, will run
afoul of the law--eight of the president's lawyers have
themselves been indicted. Alternatively, your work might pay
dividens. Such was Todd Blanche's calculus three years ago
when his white-shoe firm gave him a choice: represent Mr.
Trump, then a candidate and a criminal defendant, or remain a
partner. Mr. Blanche chose Mr. Trump. Now the president has
selected him to be America's top cop.
On July 15th the Senate began hearings to consider Mr.
Blanche's nomination to lead the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Whether lawmakers confirm him as attorney-general will test
their willingness to endorse Mr. Trump's legal agenda, but
even a rebuke would be only symbolic. The president will
still get his way at the DOJ; Mr. Blanche can stay in the job
on an acting basis for months and be replaced by someone
similar after.
With or without Mr. Blanche, the president will continue to
lead a transformation of dramatic scale. With warrants and
subpoenas, the DOJ is pursuing Mr. Trump's critics and his
hobby-horses, from political adversaries to election fraud to
leaks in the press. The number of lawyers has dwindled by
20%; former prosecutors point to an incompatibility between
the president's agenda and the fair application of law. The
DOJ
[[Page S4462]]
is retreating from certain types of criminal enforcement.
And, increasingly, judges are telling government lawyers that
they cannot be taken at their word.
The DOJ's duties, at least as historically defined, include
enforcing the law and defending the government in court. Ever
since Richard Nixon urged his attorney-general to intefere
with an investigation, politicians of both parties have
generally agreed that the DOJ should operate at some distance
from the presidency. Mr. Trump has bucked that consensus,
claiming that Democrats weaponized the law against him. Joe
Biden's DOJ indicted him twice, elected Democratic district-
attorneys indicted him twice more and Letitia James, New
York's attorney-general, sued him in civil court.
Pam Bondi, Mr. Trump's first attorney-general, was fired in
April for being insufficiently aggressive. Mr. Blanche told
the Senate this week that he is not the president's ``yes
man''. But shortly after assuming his current post, Mr.
Blanche was touting a second indictment against James Comey,
a former FBI director and antagonist of the president. Mr.
Comey had posted a photo of seashells on a beach arranged
like ``86 47''. To ``86'' someone means to get rid of them;
Mr. Trump is the 47th president. The DOJ contends that Mr.
Comey was threatening to kill Mr. Trump.
This prosecution is almost certain to fall, just like the
president's cases against Mr. James; Jerome Powell, the
former chair of the Federal Reserve; and six Democratic
lawmakers. Last month a court tossed subpoenas targeting Tim
Walz, Minnesota's govenor, and other Democratic officials in
that state. The judge wrote that the subpoenas were ``not
issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce and retaliate''
for the officials' refusal to aid the president's immigration
crackdown.
Mr. Trump complements prosecutions of political foes with
lenient treatment of his friends, through pardons and dropped
charges. Last year political appointees at the DOJ ordered
prosecutors to abandon a corruption case against Eric Adams,
then New York's mayor. Unlike Mr. Walz, he had agreed to co-
operate on immigration. A judge in New York wants to know
whether a quid pro quo inspired the DOJ to drop fraud charges
against Gautam Adani, an Indian billionaire who has promised
to invest $10bn in America.
Mr. Trump had sought to reward allies most explicitly
through a $1.8bn fund for supposed victim of government
lawfare. Even Republican senators balked at that; in June Mr.
Blanche said he had given up the idea. But it loomed over his
confirmation hearing, with John Cornyn, a Republican senator,
observing that his answers ``don't lead inevitably to the
conclusion that it's a dead''.
The DOJ is vast; last year it charged 81,000 people.
Politicized probes mark a radical departure from past norms,
but they are not enough to upend that work. Yet broader
change is underway, too, with the department itself depleted
and redirected, at remarkable speed.
Mass attrition means that some of the most experienced
lawyers have left, often for better pay in the private
sector, A former prosecutor in the Virginia office hat first
indicted Mr. Comey recounts how, after charges were issued,
nearly everyone in his unit started looking for new work.
``These people have job options.'' Now the DOJ is struggling
to fill its ranks, lowering hiring standards to rake
applicants straight from law school and offering some
recruits $25,000 signing bonuses.
Units specialising in cryptocurrency fraud and corruption
by public officials have been gutted. (As it happens, Mr.
Trump made more than $1.4bn from cryptocurrency last year.)
The group focused on counterintelligence and enforcing export
controls has warned Congress of ``unprecedented personnel
constraints'', with a 40% drop in prosecutors from a year and
a half ago. Up to a third of the counterterrorism section has
left, says a former prosecutor in that unit. The FBI, which
sits within the DOJ, has lost about 300 special agents who
worked on national security.
The DOJ's national-security division has expertise that
most prosecutors lack, in handling classified information and
charging complex statutes. They sift through dozens of FBI
referrals and decide which to pursue. ``What feels real
versus which ones are idle chatter? When is the right time to
disrupt a plot? Do we go now? Prosecutors learn that only by
working these cases over many years,'' says one who left last
year.
Fewer resources mean less enforcement in some domains.
White-collar defence lawyers remark how work has slowed. Last
year the number of financial-fraud indictments out of DOJ
headquarters and the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan fell
by 30% from the ten-year average. Indictments are a lagging
indicator of enforcement activity. Subpoenas of financial
firms, which precede them, are ``not happening, basically,''
says a white-collar lawyer in New York, who expects even
fewer indictments to come. ``Nobody's investigating those
things.'' Cases targeting political graft have largely dried
up. Mr. Trump is notably lax about that, having granted
clemency to at least 20 politicians convicted of self-dealing
over his two terms.
Instead the DOJ has made a big show around the president's
bugbears: healthcare and benefits fraud; anything connected
to cartels; transgender care; diversity, equity and
inclusion; and election fraud. Recently the FBI dispatched
260 analysts to investigate debunked claims of vote-rigging
in the 2020 election in Georgia, which Mr. Trump maintains he
won. In January the FBI seized records related to that race
in Georgia's Fulton County. Last week a judge quashed the
DOJ's subpoena seeking names of poll workers there: an
``overly broad fishing expedition is bad and is not
allowed,'' he said.
The DOJ will be at the tip of the spear if Mr. Trump
attempts to intervene in the midterm elections in November.
Ominously, it has all but shut the unit that normally
monitors election-related crimes. A prosecutor who left that
section last year says he thinks the administration is
``taking steps to be in a position to put its thumb on the
scale in 2026 or 2028''.
Election-year training for FBI agents and DOJ staff, once
mandatory, has been cancelled. The department seems to have
no intention to stand up the National Election Command Post,
which normally monitors irregularities. Instead, election
deniers populate the DOJ, including several who worked to
overturn the 2020 result. Recently they threatened to
prosecute election officials who let non-citizens vote.
No issue has consumed the attention of the Trump
administration like immigration. By September the FBI had
diverted a fifth of its roughly 14,000 agents to immigration
enforcement. What is striking is not that the president has
made immigration a priority--he said he would do as much--but
the manner in which DOJ lawyers are pursing those cases.
In the autumn Mr. Blanche showed up in Chicago, the site of
a surge of agents dubbed ``Operation Midway Blitz'', and
decried ``an organised effort by domestic terrorists to
actually injure and hurt'' those agents. Then his deputy told
prosecutors to ``go big and go loud'' against protesters.
A prosecutor in Chicago who left earlier this year says
that every unit there, including ones focused on cyber and
national-security crime, was dragooned into protester cases,
which became a ``dreaded thing''. He says the pressure from
the front office to file charges was so great that
prosecutors had to present a compelling argument not to do
so. That is the inverse of how decisions are usually made.
Agents arrested nearly 4,000 immigrants during Midway
Blitz. The crack-down in Chicago also became a stark example
of how to drive away lawyers. In the U.S. attorney's office,
which has seven criminal sections, each chief serving at the
start of Midway Blitz has quit. Seven of their 15 deputies
and at least a quarter of the 90 or so staff prosecutors have
left, too.
Across the country, there have been hundreds of shaky cases
brought against protesters. Many collapse before trial. A
jury rebellion awaits those that do make it that far. Ten of
13 resulted in an acquittal as of March, according to Steven
Salky, a defence lawyer who tracks unusual charging
decisions. By contrast, across all federal trials last year,
the acquittal rate was 12%.
Some cases have veered into the absurd. A jury took 35
minutes to acquit a man accused of pointing a laser at the
president's helicopter. Once unusual practices are more
common. In October prosecutors charged six Democratic
activists and politicians in Chicago with conspiring to
impede a federal agent, in a case known as the ``Broadview
Six''. After a judge reviewed transcripts from the grand-jury
sitting--held in secret, without judges or defence lawyers--
she said she had never seen such misbehaviour by prosecutors.
Among other no-nos, they had dismissed sceptical jurors
(including one who called the case ``a crock of shit'') who
might have been unlikely to return an indictment. In May
prosecutors dropped the case.
A consequence of all this is that the DOJ is losing
credibility in the courts. Increasingly judges are calling
out lapses by government lawyers, saying they cannot take
them at face value. The judge overseeing the Broadview Six
case said she believed that ``most government attorneys are
doing the best they can to do the right thing''. Then she
added: ``That trust has been broken.'' More judges are now
requiring depositions and documents to verify that the
government's claims are true, and threatening sanctions when
its lawyers obfuscate or fail to comply. In the first 14
months of Mr. Trump's second term, according to Just
Security, a site for legal commentary, the DOJ gave courts
inaccurate information in nearly 100 instances.
The problem is acute in immigration cases. The
administration's mass-detention policy led to a twentyfold
spike in ``habeas'' petitions by detained immigrants suing
for release between 2024 and 2025. Just Security found nearly
800 instances of non-compliance with court orders in habeas
cases, and 13 sanctions and contempt-of-court findings
against DOJ lawyers. The administration's response has been
to label any judge who disagrees with it a ``rogue
activist''. Mr. Blanche has called it a ``war'' on the
judiciary.
Seen one way, that fighting talk reflects something
positive: the guardrails in the judicial system holding up,
to the administration's dismay. Already the department's
alumni are asking what it will take to reconstitute it when
Mr. Trump leaves office. A former prosecutor says he and his
former colleagues want to return. Still, the appeal of the
department diminishes somewhat with the prospect that the
next person overseeing it may sack you, or harness the law
for their personal ends. For decades the DOJ enjoyed
[[Page S4463]]
some protection from the politics that have fractured
America. That era seems over.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Last, there is a group called Just Security, which
keeps track of what goes on in Federal courts. This is a binder of the
cases that they have put together in which a Federal judge is harshly
criticizing the integrity or the competence of the Department of
Justice.
This binder, frankly, should not exist. This is two-sided, by the
way. These many cases--it is just astounding. I am not going to ask
that this all be put into the Record. But I will note that if you look
at justsecurity.org, you can look at their report published on March
19, 2026. It gets regularly updated.
And if you want to go through it, you can see truly appalling
criticisms by Federal judges of every appointment background against
incompetence and dishonesty by the Blanche Department of Justice.
Where that really hits the road is with something called the
presumption of regularity. You might not know what the presumption of
regularity is, but it is a benefit that the government enjoys--that as
a matter of policy, the Federal judiciary has determined that the
Federal Government is generally so honest and competent that its
proceedings will be given the presumption of regularity that the
benefit of the doubt will go to the Department of Justice lawyers and
to the government Agencies involved.
Unless the adversary can prove otherwise, courts will presume that
the government has done the right thing. And over and over again, we
have seen judges say that presumption of regularity is now shot because
there is so much dishonesty and incompetence coming out of the
Department of Justice. That is unprecedented.
There are hundreds of other reasons to vote against this most
reprehensible Attorney General nominee in American history, but the
very specific ones about his complicity in the Epstein files screwup
and coverup, his being the first senior Department of Justice official
in the history of the United States to face a fraud on the courts
inquiry, where the judge already decided that the proceeding was a sham
and that the parties were in collusion with each other and that the
whole thing was done in bad faith, and that that is not an isolated
incident--that is part of a pattern of incompetence and dishonesty out
of the Department of Justice that has never before happened in the
United States of America.
If my Republican colleagues want to get behind that--if they are cool
with an Attorney General who has that record--that is on you.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Dear Senators: We write to you as survivors of Jeffrey
Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's sex-trafficking operation to
urge you to vote no on Todd Blanche's confirmation as
attorney general. We understand that both of you remain open
to opposing his nomination, and we are asking you to stand
with survivors of human trafficking and sexual assault at
this critical moment.
Under Todd Blanche's leadership, the Justice Department
released survivors' names, identifying information and images
while the names of alleged abusers and enablers remained
hidden. More than a thousand women and girls were abused, yet
no one beyond Epstein and Maxwell has been prosecuted.
During Todd Blanche's meeting with survivors, survivors
asked direct questions about how these redaction failures
happened and whether he would purse the investigative leads
that remain. Survivors received an hour of deflection,
interruption and gaslighting. Todd Blanche showed no remorse
for the horrific release of materials that exposed survivors'
identities and images. He also gave no indication that he
believed there were investigative leads worth pursing, or
that he intended to seek accountability beyond Jeffrey
Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Senator Tillis, when you urged Todd Blanche to meet with
survivors, we believed you expected a serious and meaningful
conversation. What occurred was a box-checking exercise
arranged only after his confirmation was put at risk.
Blanche's willingness to sit in a room with us should not
matter more than how he treated us once he was there.
Both of you have records of standing with survivors of
human trafficking and sexual assault. A vote to confirm Todd
Blanche would be a vote against those survivors. It would
reward someone who has refused to take responsibility for the
harm they've caused, failed to provide meaningful answers and
shown no credible commitment to pursing the full truth.
We urge you to vote no on Todd Blanche's confirmation.
Sincerely,
Annie Farmer, Jane Doe, Jena-Lisa Jones, Lara Blume McGee,
Michelle Licata, Ashley Rubright, Jane Doe, Jennifer, Lisa
Phillips, Rachel Benavidez, Audra Lynn, Jane Doe, Jess
Michaels, Liz Stein, Roza, Dani Bensky, Jane Doe, Joanna
Harrison, Marijke Chartouni, Sharlene Rochard, Jane Doe, Jane
Doe, Juliette Bryant, Marina Lacerda, Teresa J. Helm, Wendy
Pesante.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Banks). The Senator from North Carolina.
hemp
Mr. BUDD. Mr. President, every parent in America, they want the same
thing. They want to know that their kids are safe. As U.S. Senators,
each of us has a responsibility to the millions of parents we represent
for the safety and welfare of American kids first.
And that is exactly why--just 9 months ago on this very floor--76
Members of this body voted to close the hemp loophole that allowed
these dangerous substances to be sold in unregulated retail stores.
But since last November, the intoxicating hemp industry has attempted
to delay our effort to close this dangerous loophole.
May I show you some of the products that you can find in some of
these stores?
It looks like a familiar brand, but if you look closely--well,
sometimes they use the brand name. But how about something like
Slizzles? Pretty deceptive.
You know, these companies want to continue selling these intoxicating
THC substances loosely labeled as hemp products. They want to put them
on the shelves of local convenience stores, gas stations, and grocery
stores nationwide.
And the problem doesn't stop there. The packaging is unmistakably
designed to appeal to kids. Using these bright colors, they
intentionally mimic popular snack food and candy brands like this.
But what is most concerning is how easy it is for a child to walk
into a convenience store and pick up what looks like their favorite
snack or their favorite candy without realizing that they are actually
buying an intoxicating substance.
See a familiar--what might be a familiar brand here, but it is
Stoneo. How about that?
So it is difficult enough for an adult to distinguish the minor
difference on these name-brand products and intoxicating substances on
the shelves. I mean, just look at the examples. So are you telling me
that this is not intentional?
You know, the four basic principles of marketing are product, price,
place, and promotion. And what we are looking at right here, it is a
crash course in all four: how to package a product; how to make it
appealing; how to put it in front of consumers; and how to promote it,
while attempting to evade Federal law.
You know, this is not some innocent coincidence. You don't
accidentally create packaging for an intoxicating substance that bears
a strange resemblance to a recognizable brand. You don't accidentally
make an intoxicating product look something like a child would
recognize from a grocery store shelf without reasonable intent.
Now this is marketing by design, and it is designed--it is designed--
to evade the law. The resemblance here is absolutely outrageous, and it
is putting our kids at risk each and every day.
And over the past few years, we have already seen the horrifying
consequences play out in emergency rooms across the country.
From 2018 to 2023, emergency departments in the United States that
responded to pediatric cannabis poisoning increased by 461 percent; 91
percent of those patients were 4 years or younger--91 percent. And 45
percent of those kids--ages zero to 11--45 percent of them required
hospitalization.
These numbers, they are not just statistics. They represent children
ending up in emergency rooms--45 percent of them. And why? Because the
intoxicating hemp industry wants to make a cheap dollar.
Now, in my home State of North Carolina, cannabis consumption-coded
emergency department visits among minors, they increased by 969 percent
between 2017 and 2025. That is almost 1,000 percent increase, and that
is nothing short of alarming.
[[Page S4464]]
THC can have very serious consequences for adults. It can trigger
psychosis, addiction, manic episodes, bipolar relapse, depression,
anxiety, and suicidal ideation. And having assessed those risks, it
makes it utterly irresponsible to turn around and put those same THC
substances within reach of our kids.
It is also impacting our workforce. Able-bodied adults, they are
unable to hold jobs that require them to take a drug test. Stores near
military bases sell these products to men and women in the armed
services, making them ineligible for military service. And that is also
no accident.
I can't tell you how many times that I have sat down with a family in
my office that has tragically lost a son or a daughter because they
became addicted to these disguised substances, and it is just
heartbreaking to witness. It is heartbreaking to have those
conversations, and, yet, they keep coming to my office. We keep hearing
their stories.
There are young people who no longer walk this Earth. They will never
graduate. They will never go to college. They will never start a
career. They will never get married. They will never have children. And
they will never get the chance to experience the life that was ahead of
them because these dangerous substances robbed them of their future.
And I am appalled at the well-oiled, slick lobbying machine--which is
very well connected in this town, by the way--that has chosen to wage
this surreptitious war against our efforts to protect American
children.
So let me be clear to my colleagues. I am not going to back down on
this. I am not going to waver. I am not going to stop until this life-
threatening loophole is closed permanently.
And we are going to have this fight before the end of this Congress,
and I can assure you that I am not going to stop fighting to protect
American children.
And I have already had numerous conversations with the White House
about this issue, and I am willing to have a larger conversation about
marijuana. We may not agree, but I will have the conversation.
But I want to make one thing really, really clear: Making THC
intoxicating substances readily accessible to our kids is an entirely
different issue from the medical marijuana movement.
Today, we are talking about unregulated hemp products being sold on
the shelves of nearly every corner store in America. These intoxicating
substances--they are hiding in plain sight, and they are putting our
kids at risk.
Parents should never have to face the fear that sending their child
into a convenience store for a snack or a treat could mean that that
child walks out with a product that can get them high.
And that is not too much to ask. It is just common sense. And it is
our responsibility to make sure that the millions of parents that we
represent--that they can trust the product sitting on store shelves,
that they are safe for their kids.
I am not here to obstruct the Senate for the sake of obstruction. I
am here because I have a duty to the millions of parents in North
Carolina who have sent me to Washington to be their voice and, above
all, to protect their children.
To every parent in North Carolina: I hear you. I stand with you. You
have my word I am not going to back down, and I am not going to stop
fighting until we get this right.
This is a public health crisis that deserves this Senate's immediate
attention. Our children should never be the testing ground for an
industry willing to exploit a loophole in Federal law for profit.
We need to strip this amendment from the continuing resolution and
regulate these harmful substances for exactly what they are, not what
the industry wants to call it.
So if substances cause intoxication--like marijuana--then it should
be regulated as such, not given a free pass as hemp. There is no
loophole worth putting a child's well-being at risk.
I yield the floor.