As President Donald Trump seeks to make acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s role permanent, Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, tore into the president’s former personal attorney on Thursday, questioning his impartiality and criticizing his handling of the Justice Department’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
“At the end of the day, number one, the man should never have been the deputy [or] acting anything — this is Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer,” Garcia told MS NOW’s “The Weeknight.” He accused Blanche of using his powers as acting attorney general to transform the DOJ into a “law firm for Donald Trump and family.”
After Trump fired Pam Bondi in April, he appointed her deputy, Blanche, to serve as the nation’s acting top prosecutor. Under Blanche, the DOJ has pursued investigations into the president’s political enemies.
During a closed-door interview with the Oversight Committee last week, Bondi said Blanche had been largely in charge of the botched rollout of the Epstein files, which included personal identifying information about several victims.
“She mentioned Todd Blanche almost 100 times, and 50 of those times, she directly went back and blamed [him] for all sorts of problems within the Epstein investigation,” Garcia said. “She spent her entire interview blaming Todd Blanche, saying he was in charge of the redactions