WASHINGTON — As Senate Majority Leader John Thune anticipates the upcoming hearings, he holds an optimistic view regarding Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Director of National Intelligence nominee Jay Clayton’s prospects for confirmation.
Blanche’s candidacy faced turbulence last month amidst a Republican protest triggered by the now-abandoned $1.776 billion DOJ weaponization fund. Meanwhile, Clayton’s initial confirmation efforts faltered due to Trump’s insistence on a new Manhattan US Attorney’s Office prosecutor before endorsing Clayton, leaving Bill Pulte as the interim DNI.
“Blanche’s recent discussions have gone remarkably well, as feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Thune (R-SD) in an interview with The Post. He continued, “Clayton, likewise, benefits from prior confirmation experience here for the SEC.”
Expressing confidence in their chances, Thune remarked, “Unless the upcoming confirmation hearings reveal an unexpected twist, both should be in a favorable position. My goal is to have them finalized before we pause for the August recess.”
Although Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) had previously shown concerns over Blanche’s involvement with the weaponization fund, Thune noted that recent dialogues have been notably productive.
Blanche has been the acting head of the Justice Department since April 2, when Trump elevated him from his deputy attorney general post after firing Pam Bondi. The president tapped Blanche, his onetime personal attorney, to serve in his Cabinet permanently about two months later.
Police unions representing more than 670,000 officers, 300 angel families and 100 bipartisan DOJ officials “spanning the Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations” have all written to Congress voicing their support for Blanche’s nomination, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Tuesday.
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who served under former President George W. Bush; Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association President John Adler; and Jennifer Bos, the mother of a woman whose death was covered up by an illegal immigrant in Illinois, have been invited by Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans to testify in support of Blanche’s nomination, according to Politico.
Democrats on the panel are bringing in Dani Bensky, a victim of notorious sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, and Liz Oyer, a former DOJ official, to testify in opposition to Blanche.
Their invitations suggest Democrats plan to attack Blanche’s handling of the release of documents related to Epstein and accuse him of weaponizing the Justice Department in service of Trump.
Oyer was “fired by Blanche for refusing to rubberstamp gun ownership rights to Mel Gibson, a convicted domestic violence abuser and friend of Donald Trump,” while Bensky had her name “included in multiple batches of released Epstein Files,” due to an apparent failure by the DOJ to redact her name from the documents, Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill) said Monday.
Thune does not expect any Democrats to vote in favor of either Blanche or Clayton.
“They’re both probably, you know, looking at party-line votes,” he said, noting that Clayton’s 2017 nomination to head the Securities and Exchange Commission garnered bipartisan support “back when Democrats actually produced some votes for qualified nominees.”
After touting the work of Senate Republicans to confirm more than 500 executive branch nominations and 47 federal judges during Trump’s second term — noting he has “another 50 plus [nominations] teed up to go” — Thune laid into Democrats once more.
“What’s frustrating, obviously, is that everything takes longer than it should,” Thune said, because Democrats have refused to confirm “a single judge or a single civilian executive branch” via unanimous consent.
“They’re forcing us to go the long way on everything,” he lamented.
“They’re obstructing even qualified nominees, and it’s really a sad commentary on kind of where the Democrat Party is — these people really have, in a lot of ways, lost their minds in the way that they’re playing with, not just nominees, but other things.”