Austin Sarat ScheerPost
Remember Bill Clinton’s famous verbal footwork during the investigation of his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky? When asked about whether he lied when he told his aides, “There’s nothing going on between us,” the president responded, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. … ”
I thought of that on Sunday, August 16, during an interview with Attorney General Todd Blanche on NBC’s Meet the Press. Just five days after being sworn in, Blanche showed why he is unfit to serve in that office.
It started when he refused to pledge that the Justice Department would maintain its independence from the White House and added, “No attorney general should ever pledge that.”
As bad as that was, his Clintonesque moment came when Kristen Welker asked him if the president should have a voice in individual prosecutions at all. First, deflection.
“Every American,” Blanche responded, “has a voice in prosecutions.” He then described the routine ways in which citizens file criminal complaints as if they were at all comparable to a president directing the DoJ to investigate or prosecute a particular individual.
As the prominent Republican lawyer Theordore Olsen explained in 1982, when he was in charge of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, “While the President and his advisers are expected to reflect and advance both policy views and partisan instincts, the Attorney General is ex[p]ected to provide a degree of independence from partisanship in order to maintain not only the ability to represent the Congress and the people as well as the Executive, but also to provide an internal check within the Executive Branch on the partisan and policy impulses of the remainder of the Administration.”
“The Attorney General,” Olsen continued, “is properly perceived by the people as the official charged with ensuring that the Executive Branch observes constitutional limits and that the laws enacted by Congress are faithfully executed….(T)he Attorney General has the difficult burden of constant vigilance against efforts to influence his legal decisions by extra-legal considerations.”
Based on Blanche’s Meet the Press interview, it looks like the American people will need to adjust their perceptions, if not their expectations.
But he wasn’t done.
Continuing his thoughts about whether the president should have a voice in prosecutorial decision-making, Blanche went on the offensive but also did some verbal gymnastics.
“There is,” he claimed, “this extraordinarily false narrative that the President of the United States wakes up in the morning, calls me, and says Todd, ‘Go after X or Y.’”
“He does not do that,” Blanche continued, “He has never done that. He will never do that.”
Come on Todd. Really.
Only a few days into his tenure as Attorney General, Blanche wants to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public and is asking us not to believe what we read or hear. Well, it depends, I guess, on what the meaning of “Todd” is.
Maybe Trump has not yet asked his newly minted AG to “Go after X or Y,” but surely Blanche knows that the president has asked others to prosecute particular people.
Being in public office is hard, no doubt about it. But at the very least, we should be able to expect an Attorney General to show candor, truthfulness, and a willingness to level with the people he serves.
Lawyers are schooled in a duty of candor when dealing with courts and clients. Section 3.3 of the American Bar Association’s Code of Ethics forbids lawyers from “mak(ing) a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail(ing) to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer.”
And some commentators argue that the duty of candor should be “extended from the courthouse to the public square when lawyers’ lies threaten our democracy.”
Beyond that, lawyers already have an ethical obligation not “to engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”
Blanche seemingly forgot or ignored that obligation during his Meet the Press interview.
What is the evidence?
On August 7, the president took to Truth Social to urge U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to “re-visit her hastily made decision” to drop the prosecution of David Hearn for vandalizing Washington, DC’s Reflecting Pool. The president pointed out that she should do so because “the ‘gentleman’ involved is a big player in ActBlue, a disgraceful fundraising SCAM, and is represented by a TRUMP DERANGED SLEAZEBAG, Political Hack Lawyer, Norm Eisen….”
Three days earlier, the president had made his displeasure about Pirro’s decision abundantly clear during an Oval Office meeting. Blanche has refused to say what he knew about Piro’s decision or the president’s demand that she reconsider.
If the Piro incident were not enough to highlight Blanche’s evasion and misrepresentation, surely he knew about another Truth Social post, this one from September 2025, addressed to firmer AG Pam Boindi.
“Pam, I’ve reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that essentially ‘Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam Shifty Schiff, Letitia??? They all they’re all guilty as hell but nothing is going to be done’… We can’t delay any longer it’s killing our reputation and credibility they impeached me twice and indicted me 15 times over nothing Justice must be served, now….”
Never in American history has a president so publicly singled out his political enemies for prosecution.
Then, last April, when Blanche was Acting Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in North Carolina indicted Comey “for allegedly threatening the president by posting a photo of shells that spell out ‘86 47.’” Blanche acknowledged that “this case is unique…because of the name of the defendant,” but claimed that “his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate.”
Coincidence?
Maybe Blanche would say that the president’s urgent directive to prosecute Comey was not directed to him.
Bill Clinton, move over.
I could go on. But no need.
Blanche has shown us his true colors.
As Olson wrote more than four decades ago, “History is littered with the tragedies of those whose first sacrifice of principle was minor and well intentioned. The path, once taken, leads inexorably to misfortune, and it is far easier to take the second step than to retreat from the first.”
Unfortunately for all of us, Blanche’s appearance on Meet the Press showed that he has already taken that first and fatal step.
Austin D. Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He is an internationally renowned scholar whose interdisciplinary work examines law in relation to culture, violence, and the liberal arts. His academic foundation includes a B.A. from Providence College (1969), an M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1973) from the University of Wisconsin, and a J.D. from Yale Law School (1988). He has also received honorary degrees, including an LL.D. from Providence College (2008) and an A.M. from Amherst College (1984). Sarat has also been awarded the Jeffrey B. Ferguson Memorial Teaching Prize at Amherst in 2022 and the Ronald Pipkin Service Award as well as many others
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