Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s acting attorney general, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday for a nomination hearing that will help decide whether he gets the permanent job.
Blanche is unquestionably qualified to serve as the next attorney general of the United States. Indeed, the Senate confirmed Blanche as the deputy attorney general – the Justice Department’s No. 2, with almost all powers of the attorney general – nearly 16 months ago. And Blanche has already served as the acting attorney general for many months.
Blanche, a former New York federal prosecutor, white-shoe law partner and senior Justice Department official, is the right man for the job. His experience fighting (and beating) the Biden lawfare against Trump as his private attorney makes Blanche uniquely qualified to bring much-needed accountability and reforms to the Justice Department to ensure the Democrats’ unprecedented, republic-ending lawfare is never repeated. Blanche is on a glidepath to Senate confirmation as America’s next attorney general.
So naturally, Democrat operatives are getting desperate. In a last-minute judicial drive-by attack, former federal public defender-turned Obama-appointed Judge Kathleen Williams blasted out an unprecedented, lawless order Monday in which she baselessly referred Blanche for bar discipline. Her timing is obviously political. Williams sat on it for weeks, only to issue her ruling two days before Blanche is set to publicly testify at his Senate confirmation hearing.
The 11th Circuit should reverse her order, like it has done so many other times before. Instead of rewarding Williams’ partisan and dangerous judicial misconduct, the Senate must confirm Blanche before August recess.
President Trump was the victim of an unprecedented, coordinated Democrat lawfare campaign by the Biden White House, the Biden Justice Department and partisan Democrat prosecutors in New York and Atlanta. Trump sued. Among other bad actors, the lawsuit sought damages for the misconduct of Jack Smith, the former Biden special counsel who attempted to decide a presidential election for the American people through the federal criminal justice system. Trump’s lawsuit also targeted Jay Bratt, Smith’s Biden DOJ lackey. During Trump's second term, the Justice Department agreed to a settlement placing approximately $1.8 billion into an anti-weaponization fund to compensate victims of a weaponized justice system, but then scuttled the plan. Williams signed off on the voluntary dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41. That should have ended the matter, but it didn’t.
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A group of disgruntled former federal judges who were not parties to this case — people who had nothing to do with it and walked in off the street — filed an amicus brief urging Williams to reopen the case and impose punitive sanctions on the plaintiffs. Blanche, Stanley Woodward (DOJ No. 3), and the Justice Department never even entered appearances. None of that mattered to Williams. She baselessly and lawlessly referred Blanche and Woodward for bar discipline anyway, over a supposedly collusive settlement.
This ruling is legally absurd, a political disgrace and a highly improper attempt by a federal judge to change the outcome of the Senate confirmation of a senior executive branch official.
The legal problems start immediately. Williams invokes Article III constitutional authority, but she acted solely at the request of nonparties who had no stake in the case. In other words, those with no Article III standing. Stunningly, she ordered money paid to these former judges who had no part in the litigation. She then claimed there was no active case or controversy, and she disingenuously and badly attempts to distinguish this fact — which normally would be a death knell for Article III standing — from binding Supreme Court cases.
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Williams called this case "a truly unique scenario" and admitted she could not find a comparable precedent. That admission alone should have stopped her from acting as she did. Sanctions exist to punish unethical legal conduct, not to allow a federal judge to make up new law on the fly to punish political enemies.
Williams’ ruling has no limiting principle. Consent decrees are filed complaints with agreed-upon settlements that courts approve routinely. Indeed, the Justice Department has entered into hundreds of them. Under Williams' logic, were those collusive too? Should those lawyers face bar referrals and disbarment–because some lawless and emotional partisan judge didn’t like the policy result?
The 11th Circuit needs to step in and address this mess. That will not be the first time the 11th Circuit has had to clean up after Williams. It will surely not be the last time, either.
During the pandemic, Williams tried to micromanage Miami-Dade County's jail facilities, ordering that inmates receive masks, cleaning supplies and COVID testing. The 11th Circuit vacated the order. Williams struck down Florida's vaccine passport law, which protected unvaccinated cruise passengers from discrimination. She ruled it violated the First Amendment. The 11th Circuit reversed her.
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Her most outrageous anti-Trump ruling involved Alligator Alcatraz, the state-run detention facility built in the Everglades to house illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. Florida ran it; the federal government did not. Williams invoked an obscure environmental law requiring assessments before construction of federal facilities and ordered it closed. But again, it was not a federal facility.
States house federal prisoners in county jails all the time. That does not make those jails federal property. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stepped up to help the Trump administration manage the flood of illegal immigrants who poured across the border under Biden. Williams tried to stop him. The 11th Circuit reversed her and kept Alligator Alcatraz open.
Now Williams wants to derail a Trump Cabinet confirmation with a last-minute sanctions order dropped two days before Blanche's confirmation hearing. She never should have entertained the motion brought by those washed-up, bitter judges, led, as usual, by J. Michael Luttig, a perpetual Supreme Court reject who has made a career out of losing. Williams should have left the dismissal in place and moved on.
The Senate already knows how to handle this playbook. When so-called whistleblower Erez Reuveni made last-minute allegations against Third Circuit Judge Emil Bove, the Senate ignored them and confirmed Bove. They should do the same here.
The 11th Circuit will reverse Williams. And the Senate must confirm Todd Blanche before August recess.
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