Todd Blanche says he's installing 'roadblocks' to protect Trump from prosecution
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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated he is installing "roadblocks" within the Justice Department to prevent Democrats from prosecuting President Donald Trump after his presidency ends. In an exclusive NewsNation interview with Katie Pavlich surfaced by journalist Aaron Rupar, Blanche expressed concern about the actions some Democrats might take against Trump once his presidency ends.This marks the latest in a series of moves critics argue have converted the DOJ into Trump's personal protection service. Previously, Blanche signed an addendum declaring the federal government "FOREVER BARRED" from pursuing IRS audits or tax claims against Trump, his family, or businesses — part of a settlement over leaked tax records. Critics dispute whether this protection extends to future audits. Blanche also defended a nearly $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund before withdrawing support after Senate Republican resistance, reports Axios. Last November, he urged lawyers at a Federalist Society conference to wage war against rogue activist judges blocking Trump's agenda, drawing rebuke from 50 former federal judges. Blanche previously served as Trump's personal criminal defense attorney.Watch the video below. Your browser does not support the video tag.
Violent clashes between protesters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at Newark's Delaney Hall detention facility forced the Trump administration to deploy its top immigration official for emergency de-escalation after newly appointed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin made the situation dramatically worse.According to Politico reporting by Myah Ward, tensions that had been escalating nightly cooled only after border czar Tom Homan was dispatched to meet with state and local officials and negotiate a resolution to the standoff.The crisis began when images and videos surfaced showing violent clashes between pro-immigrant demonstrators and ICE agents outside the 1,000-bed, privately run detention facility. The unrest followed allegations of poor conditions inside the facility and a detainee hunger strike. Democratic lawmakers descended on the site to condemn detention conditions and accuse federal agents of violence against protesters.Mullin's response made matters worse. The new DHS secretary threatened to pull customs staffing from Newark Liberty International Airport—a threat that shocked administration officials and sparked airline industry fears of travel chaos across the region.The White House responded by deploying Homan, following a playbook it had previously used to defuse tensions in Minnesota. The border czar spent five days on the ground meeting with Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, police leadership, state troopers, and Gov. Mikie Sherrill to negotiate a path forward, according to Politico.In a bid to counter allegations of unsanitary conditions, Homan made a symbolic visit to Delaney Hall, where he ate spaghetti with detainees. He subsequently claimed local officials agreed to most of his demands, including establishing designated protest zones. Democratic officials countered that the Department of Homeland Security simply agreed to restore family visitation to the facility—a demand the community had pressed.Politico is reporting that the use of Homan underscores his "enduring influence as one of the president's top immigration policy advisers." It also reveals the administration's increasing reliance on the border czar to respond to escalating unrest surrounding federal immigration enforcement.
President Trump upended expectations yet again when he told reporters Thursday that he would be “honored” to meet Iran’s supreme leader in the event of a peace deal. “If we make a deal, it’s possible that I would meet him,” the president said in the Oval Office. The idea of a meeting between Trump and…
Up until the last minute, Democrats in ultra blue California were on the ropes in the governor’s race and local elections, with boisterous Trump-style candidates making huge strides with populist arguments.But then the long, dark shadow of President Donald Trump fell over angsty voters, and weekend news reports reveal something changed. The New York Time reports this has plenty to do with the violent thrashing of a fading MAGA star.The California governor’s race was in question for embattled Democrats due to high inflation and state taxes, and there was no guarantee that Democrat Xavier Becerra would advance to the general election for California governor. But on Friday, Becerra surpassed Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton. And s of Friday evening, the Times reports he was leading the race with 26.7 percent of the vote, with Hilton at 26.4 percent. These numbers did not reflect the scrum preceding poll results in the weeks leading up to the vote.Meanwhile, Democratic Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman is closing in on Trump-endorsed reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, cutting his lead to about 3 percentage points, according to the LA Times, as both vie for second place in the mayoral primary.This breathing room for Democrats — however potentially fleeting — should not be so easy to come by, say critics, with California’s burgeoning homelessness and taxes. But it appears Trump-style personality and reality star-pizzazz may not be enough to easily carry a candidate over the finish line after all.Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein told the New York Times on Friday that Trump’s reality-star demeanor is deflating into empty showmanship before voters thanks to Trump’s personal failure to deliver on his own political promises.“Trump’s main politically relevant skill is that he’s actually a really good reality TV star. He’s very good at grabbing attention,” said Bernstein. “ … [But] Trump is an inept president, so he mostly squanders the attention he gets — and at least half the time, he winds up drawing attention to things that don’t help him at all.”“We never know what’s really going on in a president’s head, but it seems to me that Trump thinks winning elections is like winning a prize — the United States of America — to do with as he pleases. But what actually happens in elections is that the voters hire you to do a job. It’s a job with some 340 million bosses. And like all jobs, it has constraints and obligations.”And judging by the horrific polling numbers Trump has been turning out for most of 2026, voters are not approving of his job.“Trump, as far as I can tell, just doesn’t see that. Which, among other things, seems to mean that he actually gets worse at all of this as he goes along,” said Bernstein.Couple that with a few Trump endorsements of GOP candidates in a state that generally hates him, and Democrats appear to be finding an edge that should not easily exist.
Trump is trying to rig the midterms because he’s scared. And because Trump’s scared, he’s trying to scare Americans with an imaginary boogeyman: so-called “voter fraud.”Here’s the truth: Every study shows voter fraud, including noncitizen voting, is so rare that a person is more likely to get struck by lightning than to cast a fraudulent ballot. But Trump’s using this boogeyman to sabotage our elections. Here are three things I’m worried about — then I’ll tell you how we fight back.#1 New voting restrictionsTrump is pushing for strict voter registration laws (the so-called “Save America Act”) that would require eligible voters to prove their citizenship. But a state ID or driver’s license won’t do. Voters would need to show either a current passport or a certified birth certificate from the state they were born in to register.Yet, more than 21 million Americans cannot easily provide those documents, either because they simply don’t have them or they can’t afford to get them. (Do you know where your birth certificate is?)And even if you do have it, about 80% of married women and 30% of trans people have legal names that don’t match the name on their birth certificates — which makes it even harder to register.Trump isn’t stopping there; he also wants to restrict mail-in voting, despite frequently voting by mail himself.Trump’s hypocrisy would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. Some 45 million votes were cast by mail in the 2024 general election (which he won, and doesn’t say was rigged, by the way). Restricting mail-in voting, along with instituting harsh voter ID laws, is blatant voter suppression.#2 Voter intimidationTrump insiders say he might deploy armed ICE or Border Patrol agents to polling sites.Trump’s violent ICE agents have run rampant in our streets, abusing both noncitizens and citizens alike. The presence of armed agents of the state at polling places would almost certainly have a chilling effect on voter turnout — which is exactly what Trump wants.#3 Denying election resultsTrump’s latest big lie is that any Democratic victory is illegitimate.What if Republicans lose the midterms but follow Trump’s 2020 example and try to hold onto power? A few years ago, this would have been unthinkable. But after what Trump tried doing in 2020, it’s frighteningly plausible.The bottom line is Trump is deeply unpopular, which is why he is trying to suppress the vote. But here is how we can fight back.1. Press your state and local leaders to protect our elections right now. Your state attorney general and local election officials still have authority over our voting system. Urge them to develop a plan to protect our elections. Call on them to sue the Trump administration if it tries to seize ballots. Tell your state legislature to ban armed federal agents from polling places, like New Mexico just did.2. Second, VOTE — and help turn out the vote! We need to show up in such large numbers that no amount of voter suppression can change the result. Go to vote.org right now and check your registration. Then reach out to three friends and make sure they are registered to show up.3. Lastly, SOUND THE ALARM. Share the video I’ve posted above, which I made with the talented team at Inequality Media Civic Action. Help spread the word that the boogeyman of voter fraud is just a cover for Trump’s election sabotage.Trump’s strategy to sabotage the election depends on fear, confusion, and division.We must respond by being brave, focused, and united. - YouTube www.youtube.com Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy — a Donald Trump appointee in Rhode Island — referred U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys to a court disciplinary committee. Politico's Josh Gerstein, reporting on X, noted that the ruling was "over handling of fight over trans medical care subpoenas to RI Hospital" — adding, "Earlier she agreed that presumption of regularity for [government] 'no longer holds.'"Gerstein tweeted a previous court document by McElroy, dated May 14. And she was quite critical in some of her comments.McElroy, in the document, wrote, "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. DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (the 'Texas court')."The federal judge went on to say that the Trump DOJ "has misled the parties with whom it was negotiating in Rhode Island, who have now been placed in an untenable and unprecedented procedural position."McElroy added, "And when its attorneys came to this Court to explain their conduct, the senior attorney — who was present at many of the events that took place in this case — sat silently by as his counterpart, a junior attorney who has been practicing law for approximately six months and had no relevant information, was forced to answer questions about DOJ's blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations."McElroy explained, "Now before the Court is the petitioner, the Child Advocate for the State of Rhode Island’s (the 'Child Advocate') Emergency Motion to Quash a subpoena duces tecum issued by DOJ as well as Rhode Island Hospital's ('RIH') Motion to Quash the same subpoena. (ECF Nos. 1, 28.) For the following reasons, the Court GRANTS both Motions to Quash and enjoins the DOJ from seeking or receiving any documents related to this now invalid subpoena."Trump nominated McElroy to her current position during her first presidency, and she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Trump didn’t drop his $1.8 billion slush fund because of political backlash. Worshipped by the nation’s lowest IQ foot soldiers and propped up by tax-and-regulation-averse donors no matter his crimes, Trump doesn’t care about the midterms because he doesn’t have to. If his suppression efforts fail, he’ll switch to intimidation. If masked goons don’t work, he’ll claim the results were ‘rigged.’ He may even succeed in manufacturing grounds for declaring martial law and cancelling the midterms entirely.Elections don’t vex a man who uses force to erase them, which suggests most analysts got his slush-fund reversal wrong. As I see it, Trump didn’t drop the looting to soften the results in November. He dropped it to avoid having to name his third AG.Trump and Todd Blanche quickly repackaged Trump’s IRS case without the ‘anti-weaponization fund’ because of an extremely unusual intervention in the case by 35 retired federal judges. Even Trump understands how a finding of ‘fraud upon the courts’ paired with larceny would tar his legacy, especially if his own AG is permanently disbarred over it. Thirty-five federal judges express shock On May 27, 2026, thirty five retired federal judges of all political stripes filed a motion to reopen Trump’s IRS case on suspicion of fraud against the court. The significance of what they wrote cannot be overstated. The motion suggested that the DOJ had “deceived” U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams by announcing a settlement to the public after failing to mention it to the court. It was an “extraordinary” deception, the judges wrote, where (Blanche) “dismissed this case before the Court could complete its inquiry into whether there was an actual case or controversy, and then cited the ‘settlement’ of this case as the legal justification for looting the federal treasury of $1.776 billion dollars and purporting to release all possible federal claims against President Trump, his family, and his businesses.”The judges aren’t just frothing over the larceny. The fraud, they noted, is bigger and more consequential. Trump/Blanche tried to manipulate and defraud, then circumvent and forever silence a federal court. Blanche tried to orchestrate that court’s imprimatur on an unprecedented theft of taxpayer funds, knowing full well that the court had no jurisdiction and never could because there was no case or controversy. If Trump sits on both sides of the same case, both controlling the outcome and financially benefitting from it, there is no legal controversy. There is no case. There is only theft, and claiming otherwise is fraud.“Most egregious conduct”The judges didn’t hold back, suggesting that this case demonstrated “most egregious conduct involving a corruption of the judicial process itself.” The parties “used the proceedings before this Court as a legal pretext,” they wrote, “while trying to deprive this Court of the opportunity to determine whether this was a real case or controversy in the first place. To (allow it) would be, in effect, to reward and immunize such collusion from judicial scrutiny, since the parties to such a scheme will obviously never challenge” fraud that benefits them personally.They argue that Blanche corruptly sought judicial cover for collusion. “Indeed, the corruption of the judicial process is exactly what happened here. The parties have used this lawsuit—which was never an adversarial proceeding over which the Court even had jurisdiction—as a means to allow a “commission” controlled by the President to dole out $1.776 billion in taxpayer dollars without constitutional or congressional authority to do so, and to confer unlawful private benefits to the President and his family by purportedly prohibiting the United States from prosecuting any and all claims against them.”Blanche “plainly tried to shield (his) conduct from necessary judicial scrutiny by short-circuiting this Court’s inquiry into whether the lawsuit is in fact an actual case or controversy by filing (the dismissal) before they announced the “settlement” —clearly in hopes of preventing the Court from ever completing that inquiry, which, if it comes out against the parties, will undo their collusive “settlement.”How Blanche and Trump tried to do itAs I wrote on May 21 in ‘Todd Blanche should be disbarred for this,’ Blanche moved to dismiss the case two days before his brief outlining the court’s jurisdiction was due. Blanche’s orchestrated ‘settlement’ purported to “bind the United States to a stunningly broad release of potential claims” against Trump for tax evasion, and to pay billions of dollars, without even trying to defend against Trump’s underlying claims.Blanche failed to assert the most basic defenses to Trump’s IRS claims, defenses Blanche was legally obligated to assert, and which the DOJ has previously asserted in prior claims. There was even a prior IRS case involving the same IRS contractor as the one who released Trump’s tax returns, Charles Littlejohn.
Anthropic wants to keep AI away from repressive regimes. But what about its part-owner, the repressive dictatorship of Abu Dhabi?
The post Anthropic Says We Must Stop Authoritarian AI. But What About Its Authoritarian Investors? appeared first on The Intercept.
