Having your own “DOJ” and defense attorney is literally page 1 of a dictator in…
Having your own “DOJ” and defense attorney is literally page 1 of a dictator in 1934. “Todd Blanche got the votes to be Attorney General by promising he'd narrow the president's immunity. His first act Monday night was to widen it. The memo came out Monday evening, the same night as Blanche's swearing-in ceremony.
In it, the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel argued that the president can claim executive privilege over his communications with "private advisers," as long as they are confidential and tied to his presidential "decisionmaking."
The memo went further, appearing to stretch that privilege to cover communications between the president's advisers and ordinary civilians.
Strip away the legal language and the memo is a blueprint for stonewalling Congress, written and published within hours of the new Attorney General taking his oath. If Democrats retake the House this November and open investigations into Trump or his officials, this is the wall they will hit.
Remember how Blanche got the job. It came down to a 50-49 vote, and it only happened because a handful of Republicans, including Bill Cassidy, John Cornyn, and Tom Tillis, accepted his assurances that he would limit the scope of presidential immunity, not expand it.
That was the deal. That was the reason they gave for trusting Trump's former personal defense lawyer to run the department that is supposed to answer to the public.
The ink was not dry.
Blanche's first real act was to widen the president's protections, exactly the thing he told those senators he would restrain. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the memo showed Trump was "petrified of the questions a Democratic Congress will demand answers to."
The senators who confirmed him wanted to believe the man had changed clients, that he worked for the country now. He answered that within the day.
He was Trump's defense attorney before the vote. He is still Trump's defense attorney after it. The only thing that changed is the title on the door.”
