Judiciary Committee cancels vote on Blanche AG nomination amid GOP opposition

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) late Wednesday evening canceled a scheduled meeting to consider the nomination of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to lead the Justice Department amid opposition from some GOP senators on the panel. “Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure. Senators Cornyn…

Contemptible: Rand Paul Schedules Vote to Hold Fifth Amendment-Loving Fauci Accountable

Hammer drop exposes Todd Blanche to judge hours before confirmation vote

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's own admissions about FBI negligence in the Epstein case landed in federal court today, hours before his Senate confirmation vote.Survivors' attorneys filed the letter Wednesday before Judge Ryon McCabe in the Southern District of Florida in the case Doe 1 et al. v. United States. The filing suggests the survivors believe Blanche admitted wrongdoing by the FBI in a rush to deflect responsibility for failures in the Epstein case.The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on Blanche's confirmation Thursday morning.The letter cites Blanche's statements at a July 16 meeting with survivors at Justice Department headquarters as grounds to amend the complaint. Plaintiffs said they were "seeking this relief in light of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's very recent statements to survivors."During that meeting, ABC News reported, survivors described Blanche's conduct as "dissatisfactory and contrived" when he dismissed survivor Maria Farmer, telling her that her "call [to the FBI about EpsteinI] was made in 1996," "the case was handled improperly before 2007" and "you got screwed over by the FBI but I cannot fix the FBI's lack of investigation."Those admissions, the filing shows, now sit in a federal court record the day before senators decide Blanche's fate.The underlying lawsuit, filed in September 2024, represents 33 women suing the U.S. government under the Federal Tort Claims Act — a law that allows citizens to sue the federal government for negligence — for the FBI's failures in the Epstein case. They are seeking more than $100 million.The complaint alleges the FBI received its first credible tip in 1996, when Maria Farmer reported that Epstein and Maxwell had sexually abused her and her sister. The FBI did nothing.It also alleges the FBI ignored child sexual abuse material seized in a 2005 raid of Epstein's Palm Beach mansion, failed to interview victims whose names and phone numbers it already had, and allowed Epstein to judge a beauty pageant in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2007 while under active investigation.Epstein survivor Annie Farmer, who testified at Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal trial, said she left the meeting convinced senators should vote against Blanche, ABC News reported. She called him "abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors."Annie Farmer said his evasiveness felt like "a deliberate attempt to claim the Attorney General's office is powerless in this matter.""The FBI has the power to open investigations, not me," Blanche told those assembled inside the meeting, MS NOW reported. "I'm just the attorney general," he added.The meeting only happened because Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), whose vote Blanche needs to clear the Judiciary Committee, demanded it as a condition of his support, ABC News reported. As of Wednesday afternoon, Tillis had still not committed to voting for Blanche's confirmation.That vote is scheduled for Thursday morning.

Republicans trapped in 'high-stakes game of chicken' as candidate's campaign spirals

Scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is turning into the child nobody wants with two major campaign funders waiting for the other to step into the breach.The Republican Party's top spending committees are locked in a "high-stakes game of chicken" over Paxton's floundering Senate campaign—each hoping the other will kick in tens of millions needed to save his sinking candidacy."Somebody is going to have to spend big money," said Dan Eberhart, an oil executive fundraising for Paxton, told the Times. "We'll see who blinks."The calculus is brutal. Texas demands approximately $15 million weekly in super PAC advertising for a credible campaign—making it a resource drain compared to cheaper battlegrounds with equal strategic value. Republican strategists are increasingly questioning whether Paxton is worth the investment.According to the report, "Mr. Paxton finds himself in a unique situation among Senate candidates, according to interviews with a dozen Republicans with ties to his campaign. Republican donors still hold grudges from a bruising primary. The state, with its 18-plus television markets, is an epically expensive setting. And his Democratic opponent, James Talarico, has proved to be a particularly strong fund-raiser."Paxton is also being shunned by Washington campaign cash rainmakers."National Republican groups are slated to spend tens of millions of dollars this summer and fall in every other top-tier Senate race, including in some states that prominent handicappers think are not as competitive as Texas," the Times is reporting. "They even plan to spend more in noncompetitive Kansas. In most states, Republicans are expected to outspend Democrats — for instance in Ohio, where the G.O.P. commitment totals over $100 million."The Times notes that "the amount of Republican spending planned in Texas from now through Election Day, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm: $0."

Republican inadvertently calls Trump's biggest success the 'scandal of my lifetime'

A GOP senator accidentally called President Donald Trump's biggest success the "scandal of my lifetime" with his comments on Fox News.Sen. Ron Johnson spoke with Fox News on Wednesday about COVID vaccinations in light of the recent testimony by Anthony Fauci. He told anchor Laura Ingraham that "these injections cause death" and that the COVID vaccine is the "great government scandal of my lifetime."However, online critics noted that Trump boasted in the past that his first administration rolled out the COVID vaccines and that Johnson's comments amounted to calling Trump's success a scandal."Trump literally said, 'I came up with the vaccines,'" progressive news personality Alex Cole wrote in a post on X. "If you believe Ron Johnson, then isn't he admitting Trump's biggest accomplishment was a disaster?"Democratic strategist Leslie Marshall similarly noted that Johnson was slamming COVID vaccines that "Trump green-lighted expeditiously.""He is a really dangerous liar. Who is he working for??" legal analyst Sara Dillon posted, mocking Johnson's attack on Fauci, who worked for the Trump administration during COVID.Others simply went after Ron Johnson's claims that COVID vaccines "cause death.""Ron Johnson needs a warning label," blogger Jim Stewartson wrote. "Having him on television is a risk to public health, an act of deadly negligence. FOX should be sued by everyone who lost someone because they listened to compromised idiots like this.""This isn't just political posturing: this is evil and will hurt innocent people," lawyer and political commentator John Jackson posted. "It's not enough to beat the Republican Party. We need to expose them so badly that they have to change their name."

MAGA AG moves to investigate Fauci as Republicans vow revenge for invoking Fifth

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, is launching an investigation into former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Anthony Fauci.According to Politico, Uthmeier's boss, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has concocted a bizarre legal theory for why Fauci, who testified before a hostile GOP-dominated Senate committee on Wednesday, was not allowed to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights under questioning from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)."Uthmeier has launched several investigations since he was appointed by DeSantis in February 2025, from suing health organizations over the state’s ban on transgender treatments for children to recruiting rules used by the NFL," noted the report. This follows DeSantis writing "in a Wednesday X post the former White House adviser cannot claim the Fifth Amendment since he received a preemptive pardon by Biden, and he should be held in contempt for not answering Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul’s questions about U.S. funding going to a lab in a region of China where the first Covid cases were reported."Paul has spent years pursuing the idea that Fauci-backed "gain of function" research was responsible for engineering the COVID virus, something that has never been substantiated, and has openly called for Fauci's arrest. In his testimony, Fauci explained that while he has not broken any laws, his lawyers advised him to remain silent due to Paul's eagerness for a pretext to prosecute him.For his part, said the report, Paul "told Fauci he will face consequences for pleading the Fifth and has scheduled an Aug. 5 committee meeting to discuss whether to declare him in contempt of Congress," while Uthmeier said weeks before the hearing even took place "that he was losing sleep over thinking of ways to prosecute Fauci."Florida became ground zero in 2020 for political leadership defiance against public health guidelines for required masking and social distancing, during the height of the pandemic. The state became a huge vector for the spread of COVID.

Trump Takes a Swipe at Cornyn as RINO Senator Refuses to Vote to Confirm Blanche – Cornyn Responds (VIDEO)

President Trump took a swipe at John Cornyn as the RINO Senator refuses to vote to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General. The post Trump Takes a Swipe at Cornyn as RINO Senator Refuses to Vote to Confirm Blanche – Cornyn Responds (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Put a Lock on It, Fauci

The private notes of the man who oversaw COVID policy are deeply embarrassing—and surprisingly instructive.