Sen. Whitehouse Warns Committee Against Making a "Grave Mistake" Ahead of Blanche Hearing

[0:00] I'd like to take my time this morning to suggest that combining our oversight hearing of the [0:10] Department of Justice with the nominations hearing for Acting Attorney General Blanche [0:18] would be a grave mistake for the committee. [0:24] I don't believe we did that with Attorney General Garland, and I think the record of [0:33] the Department of Justice under Todd Blanche lends itself to very vigorous oversight. [0:43] Oversight which we have been denied because when we ask questions, we get scripted litanies [0:52] of insult and quarrel rather than actual answers to our questions. [0:58] When we ask for documents and records in writing, we get nothing. [1:05] We are reduced to filing FOIA requests that are then not even complied with as FOIA requests. [1:12] So the oversight function of this committee is really, I think, being systematically disabled. [1:22] That's particularly significant when you have Attorney General Bondi saying that it was Todd [1:28] Blanche who was responsible for the Epstein files disaster, the releases of private information [1:38] and images of victims, the cover up of documents that named Donald Trump, and just the general incompetence [1:50] of the whole wretched mess. [1:55] I don't think that it would be a good idea for this committee to be complicit in covering up the cover up of the Epstein files. [2:08] Move on to the slush fund, which a great number of my Republican colleagues have expressed real reservations about, [2:17] with its attachment of a tax amnesty deal for Trump, the Trump family, and the Trump businesses. [2:26] There are very legitimate questions to be asked about that, including has that cockamamie idea really been withdrawn, [2:36] or is it just being hidden briefly so it can resurface in some other fashion? [2:44] We should be looking into this as a committee. [2:46] It's important stuff. [2:49] And even if we shirk our duties at looking into all of this, [2:53] it appears that a Florida court is going to be looking into all of this. [2:59] And I think it's a bad look for the committee to be turning a blind eye to what went into the slush fund deal, [3:06] and the tax amnesty deal, and then discover, through a court proceeding in Florida, [3:13] all the stuff that we failed to look at. [3:17] It's hard to be taken seriously if we have failed to do our own duty, [3:21] and then the court proceedings reveal the mischief. [3:27] I will say that I've looked, I have never, ever heard of senior officials of the Department of Justice [3:40] being called before a court with respect to a fraud upon the court. [3:47] Look up fraud upon a court. [3:50] It's a pretty serious charge. [3:52] This one was brought, raised, I guess I should say, by 36, three dozen retired federal judges, [3:58] some very, very respected ones, some very, very conservative ones. [4:04] And the judge in the proceeding in Florida, out of which the slush fund settlement emerged, [4:09] reopened the case to have a look. [4:11] She asked for responses. [4:20] She suggested that the DOJ might have violated its own policies in the settlement. [4:25] She suggested that there was an IRS defense memo out there that would be relevant to the proceedings. [4:36] The violation of DOJ policies would obviously be a matter for DOJ to answer. [4:41] The IRS client memo would obviously be something for DOJ to answer. [4:48] She also questioned whether there was collusion. [4:51] It takes two to collude. [4:54] It would be a collusion between the Department of Justice lawyers and Trump's private lawyers. [5:00] So there's another reason for the Department of Justice to have responded. [5:05] What happened last Friday? [5:07] No response from the Department of Justice. [5:09] First-ever accusation of senior-level Department of Justice people of fraud upon the court with an invitation to rebut the allegations, [5:18] an invitation specific to Department of Justice conduct, and they duck. [5:25] So that is going to continue. [5:29] The three dozen judges have their answer this Friday, and then the court will go forward. [5:35] I will contend that we don't look like much if that information is being developed in a federal courtroom, [5:41] and we haven't been allowed to ask questions, and indeed our oversight has been collapsed into a confirmation hearing. [5:48] I have never seen a Department of Justice as badly run as this one. [5:53] I have never seen fraud upon the court allegations. [5:57] I've never seen so many suggestions of contempt. [5:59] I've never seen so many no-true bills. [6:01] I've never seen so many cases thrown out. [6:04] I've never seen so many accusations that department arguments were false, were pretextual, were designed to fool rather than inform the court. [6:14] And we see that over and over again from judges appointed by every president. [6:19] It is now at the point where the Department of Justice and the US government have lost their presumption of regularity in federal court proceedings. [6:29] All of this matters. [6:31] All of this is something to which this committee should be paying attention. [6:35] And with respect to what our chairman has said about the norms of the committee, well, one norm is that US attorneys come through this committee after a process of consultation before they get to run US attorney's office. [6:54] Over and over again, we see these slippery deals where acting US attorneys are appointed and then the first assistant is fired and when the time runs out on the acting US attorney, they slip back into the first attorney position and leave a vacancy. [7:15] It's an obvious scam to get around this committee's norms. [7:23] And we have put up with this. [7:25] It didn't happen once. [7:26] It didn't happen twice. [7:27] It has happened over and over and over and over again. [7:30] And on top of that, we've seen US attorneys called out for misconduct over and over and over again. [7:38] None of this is normal. [7:40] None of this is normal. [7:42] None of this is normal. [7:44] And the fact that this committee won't look into it, I think, is a shame. [7:48] And I think if we try to be complicit in failing in our duty to look into this by combining the Blanche nomination hearing with the Department of Justice oversight hearing, we will have made a very, very grave mistake. [8:02] Thank you, Chairman. [8:03] Thank you, Chairman.