Yesterday, Todd “DARVO” Blanche took to the Sunday shows to complain about Democratic lawmakers being so mean to the Trump administration.
After Tuesday’s blue tsunami, Democrats promised to investigate the administration’s flagrant corruption. Naturally Trump spent Saturday flipping his shit and demanding that these “EXTORTIONISTS” be imprisoned.
An hour later, he followed up by urging Americans to report Democratic “threats” to DOJ — “If you would like, send them directly to me, your President” — because “These SLEAZEBAGS should go to jail.”
So the attorney general parked his keister in front of the cameras and worked himself into a lather of feigned indignation. Blanche, who spent the past two years forcing the president’s enemies to pony up millions of dollars in legal fees, is BIG MAD about a post from Rep. Robert Garcia, the incoming Oversight chair, warning Trump administration officials to “LAWYER UP.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he vamped to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. “Stephen Miller has a lawyer. It’s me.”
And he did such a bang-up job for his last private client!
Third verse, same as the first
To prop up their “we’re the real victims” storyline, Republicans are recycling a month-old smear targeting Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin. In a wide-ranging discussion at the University of Chicago, she explained that the incoming Congress will use its oversight power to hold the president accountable and to deter people from carrying out his corrupt edicts:
I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him. I want young people coming out of school to say, “Should I go work for the Trump administration?” Like, “That sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.”
I want them to be like, “Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want. And so, let me avoid participating in that.” I want that deterrence message sent.
As Greg Sargent noted, right-wing accounts screeched that Slotkin was pledging to hunt down College Republicans. Trump called her “a low life who is ruining her state,” and now he’s back for another bite at the apple, howling that the senator “is saying that she is going to go after all young people that believe in Republican Values, and that give even the slightest inclination to be a Republican.”
On CNN this weekend, Blanche called Slotkin’s comments potentially criminal: “They have threatened donors. They have threatened individuals who are in college and might want to work for conservative institutions or for a conservative government or for President Trump.”
Todd Blanche, who charged the Southern Poverty Law Center with defrauding donors is outraged that someone would demonize conservative institutions. The guy whose office is targeting the Open Society Institute, funded by Jewish philanthropist George Soros, for potential racketeering, wire fraud, and even terrorism charges. The one whose boss ordered him to investigate Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, and Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias. The guy who personally authorized a raid Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home three weeks before the election.
But please, Mister Attorney General, tell us more about how Democrats’ conduct is “so vile and so dangerous.”
Best defense is a good offense
Blanche’s attack on Slotkin is exceptionally craven since the DOJ actually tried to throw the senator in jail in February. Last November, Sen. Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Chris Deluzio and Maggie Goodlander, all veterans of the military or intelligence community, made a 90-second video reminding active-duty service members that “you must refuse illegal orders.”
The statement was protected by both the First Amendment and legislative immunity. It also happens to be true. But Trump called them seditious traitors who should be punished with death, and so the FBI opened an investigation that only ended when a grand jury in DC told US Attorney Jeanine Pirro to get lost.
Blanche is once again threatening to prosecute Sen. Slotkin for doing her job, lying about what she said, and summoning the troll storms and threats he knows will follow — all while howling that she is intimidating him.
The attacks on Rep. Garcia are yet another retread. In February of 2025, interim US Attorney Ed Martin, who was too much of a wackass to get confirmed by a Republican Senate, sent a menacing letter demanding that the congressman “clarify” what he meant by “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight.”
“This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk – an appointed representative of President Donald Trump who you call a ‘dick’ – and government staff who work for him,” Martin babbled.
Martin eventually got himself turfed out of the DOJ altogether, reportedly because his blabbermouth sank the grand jury investigation into California Sen. Adam Schiff, another Trump enemy.
But now Blanche has picked up the mantle, warning House Oversight Committee members that he “would be very worried” if he were them.
Not your job, bro
As for his generous offer to serve as counsel to the entire executive branch, Blanche insists this is a constitutional obligation.
“The Constitution sees it as my job,” he blustered, adding that if Rep. Garcia didn’t have a copy, “I can arrange to send him one.”
Perhaps the AG should scrutinize his edition a bit more closely, though, since it doesn’t mention the attorney general at all. The office was created by Section 35 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which gave the AG exactly two jobs: argue the government’s cases at the Supreme Court and give legal advice to the president and department heads. The Justice Department didn’t even exist until 1870.
What Blanche is really talking about is a regulation, 28 C.F.R. § 50.15, which lets DOJ represent federal employees in congressional proceedings if the attorney general decides their conduct was within the scope of their employment and that representation is in the interest of the United States. So yes, Stephen Miller will probably get a taxpayer-funded lawyer. But when Blanche vowed to represent Pete Hegseth at his likely impeachment hearing, he accused Bash of “ignoring history, and including recent history” of the attorney general acting as personal lawyer for cabinet members.
That, too, was bullshit. When Trump was impeached the first time, he was defended by his personal lawyer Jay Sekulow and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, not by Bill Barr. (The White House Counsel is not a part of DOJ.)
In 2023, DOJ’s own Office of Legal Counsel noted that “the Department has not provided formal representation in any of the five impeachment trials of Executive Branch officers.” When House Republicans impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas the following year, DHS hired Debevoise & Plimpton to represent him, racking up $1.6 million in bills. The Heritage Foundation called it “obscene.”
And while Blanche performs umbrage at all the patriotic conservatives who won’t enter government service because of scary Elissa Slotkin, Trump has gleefully gutted the federal bureaucracy and pointed to its diminution as a sign of his own greatness.
During the dark days of DOGE, the Office of Personnel Management shoved hundreds of thousands of employees out the door, chirping that “The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”
Obviously, Blanche doesn’t give a shit when the Forest Service gets burned down. But he cares very much about his own agency’s inability to hire competent lawyers.
Since 2025, the DOJ has lost nearly 1,000 assistant US attorneys and faced a drastic decline in both the number and quality of applicants to replace them. In March, the Department started letting US attorney’s offices hire prosecutors straight out of law school. Former DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle and leaders of multiple US Attorneys offices took to social media begging young lawyers to slide into their DMs and shoot over a CV. Turns out, it’s not so easy to hire good employees when you’re asking them to bring dogshit cases that will land them on the front page and maybe even the disciplinary docket of the state bar.
Plus there’s the little matter that this DOJ has a nasty habit of trying to prosecute its own people. Blanche publicly crows that he’s trying to build a case against former special counsel Jack Smith, and he’s so desperate to put former FBI director Jim Comey in handcuffs that he filed charges over a picture of seashells on Instagram. Last week, in the same courthouse where Comey is fighting yet a third set of garbage criminal charges, a magistrate tossed the DOJ’s case against two former FBI officials for lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said from the bench, adding that “This case is marketing material to discourage people from joining the FBI.”
The call is coming from inside the house, Todd! And soon, it’ll be coming from the House, too. As a wise man once said, LAWYER UP!
Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:
The post Todd Blanche Is The Real Victim. Just Ask Him, He’ll Tell You! appeared first on Above the Law.
Yesterday, Todd “DARVO” Blanche took to the Sunday shows to complain about Democratic lawmakers being so mean to the Trump administration.
After Tuesday’s blue tsunami, Democrats promised to investigate the administration’s flagrant corruption. Naturally Trump spent Saturday flipping his shit and demanding that these “EXTORTIONISTS” be imprisoned.
An hour later, he followed up by urging Americans to report Democratic “threats” to DOJ — “If you would like, send them directly to me, your President” — because “These SLEAZEBAGS should go to jail.”
So the attorney general parked his keister in front of the cameras and worked himself into a lather of feigned indignation. Blanche, who spent the past two years forcing the president’s enemies to pony up millions of dollars in legal fees, is BIG MAD about a post from Rep. Robert Garcia, the incoming Oversight chair, warning Trump administration officials to “LAWYER UP.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he vamped to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. “Stephen Miller has a lawyer. It’s me.”
And he did such a bang-up job for his last private client!
To prop up their “we’re the real victims” storyline, Republicans are recycling a month-old smear targeting Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin. In a wide-ranging discussion at the University of Chicago, she explained that the incoming Congress will use its oversight power to hold the president accountable and to deter people from carrying out his corrupt edicts:
I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him. I want young people coming out of school to say, “Should I go work for the Trump administration?” Like, “That sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.”
I want them to be like, “Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want. And so, let me avoid participating in that.” I want that deterrence message sent.
As Greg Sargent noted, right-wing accounts screeched that Slotkin was pledging to hunt down College Republicans. Trump called her “a low life who is ruining her state,” and now he’s back for another bite at the apple, howling that the senator “is saying that she is going to go after all young people that believe in Republican Values, and that give even the slightest inclination to be a Republican.”
On CNN this weekend, Blanche called Slotkin’s comments potentially criminal: “They have threatened donors. They have threatened individuals who are in college and might want to work for conservative institutions or for a conservative government or for President Trump.”
Todd Blanche, who charged the Southern Poverty Law Center with defrauding donors is outraged that someone would demonize conservative institutions. The guy whose office is targeting the Open Society Institute, funded by Jewish philanthropist George Soros, for potential racketeering, wire fraud, and even terrorism charges. The one whose boss ordered him to investigate Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, and Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias. The guy who personally authorized a raid Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home three weeks before the election.
But please, Mister Attorney General, tell us more about how Democrats’ conduct is “so vile and so dangerous.”
Blanche’s attack on Slotkin is exceptionally craven since the DOJ actually tried to throw the senator in jail in February. Last November, Sen. Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Chris Deluzio and Maggie Goodlander, all veterans of the military or intelligence community, made a 90-second video reminding active-duty service members that “you must refuse illegal orders.”
The statement was protected by both the First Amendment and legislative immunity. It also happens to be true. But Trump called them seditious traitors who should be punished with death, and so the FBI opened an investigation that only ended when a grand jury in DC told US Attorney Jeanine Pirro to get lost.
Blanche is once again threatening to prosecute Sen. Slotkin for doing her job, lying about what she said, and summoning the troll storms and threats he knows will follow — all while howling that she is intimidating him.
The attacks on Rep. Garcia are yet another retread. In February of 2025, interim US Attorney Ed Martin, who was too much of a wackass to get confirmed by a Republican Senate, sent a menacing letter demanding that the congressman “clarify” what he meant by “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight.”
“This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk – an appointed representative of President Donald Trump who you call a ‘dick’ – and government staff who work for him,” Martin babbled.
Martin eventually got himself turfed out of the DOJ altogether, reportedly because his blabbermouth sank the grand jury investigation into California Sen. Adam Schiff, another Trump enemy.
But now Blanche has picked up the mantle, warning House Oversight Committee members that he “would be very worried” if he were them.
As for his generous offer to serve as counsel to the entire executive branch, Blanche insists this is a constitutional obligation.
“The Constitution sees it as my job,” he blustered, adding that if Rep. Garcia didn’t have a copy, “I can arrange to send him one.”
Perhaps the AG should scrutinize his edition a bit more closely, though, since it doesn’t mention the attorney general at all. The office was created by Section 35 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which gave the AG exactly two jobs: argue the government’s cases at the Supreme Court and give legal advice to the president and department heads. The Justice Department didn’t even exist until 1870.
What Blanche is really talking about is a regulation, 28 C.F.R. § 50.15, which lets DOJ represent federal employees in congressional proceedings if the attorney general decides their conduct was within the scope of their employment and that representation is in the interest of the United States. So yes, Stephen Miller will probably get a taxpayer-funded lawyer. But when Blanche vowed to represent Pete Hegseth at his likely impeachment hearing, he accused Bash of “ignoring history, and including recent history” of the attorney general acting as personal lawyer for cabinet members.
That, too, was bullshit. When Trump was impeached the first time, he was defended by his personal lawyer Jay Sekulow and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, not by Bill Barr. (The White House Counsel is not a part of DOJ.)
In 2023, DOJ’s own Office of Legal Counsel noted that “the Department has not provided formal representation in any of the five impeachment trials of Executive Branch officers.” When House Republicans impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas the following year, DHS hired Debevoise & Plimpton to represent him, racking up $1.6 million in bills. The Heritage Foundation called it “obscene.”
And while Blanche performs umbrage at all the patriotic conservatives who won’t enter government service because of scary Elissa Slotkin, Trump has gleefully gutted the federal bureaucracy and pointed to its diminution as a sign of his own greatness.
During the dark days of DOGE, the Office of Personnel Management shoved hundreds of thousands of employees out the door, chirping that “The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”
Obviously, Blanche doesn’t give a shit when the Forest Service gets burned down. But he cares very much about his own agency’s inability to hire competent lawyers.
Since 2025, the DOJ has lost nearly 1,000 assistant US attorneys and faced a drastic decline in both the number and quality of applicants to replace them. In March, the Department started letting US attorney’s offices hire prosecutors straight out of law school. Former DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle and leaders of multiple US Attorneys offices took to social media begging young lawyers to slide into their DMs and shoot over a CV. Turns out, it’s not so easy to hire good employees when you’re asking them to bring dogshit cases that will land them on the front page and maybe even the disciplinary docket of the state bar.
Plus there’s the little matter that this DOJ has a nasty habit of trying to prosecute its own people. Blanche publicly crows that he’s trying to build a case against former special counsel Jack Smith, and he’s so desperate to put former FBI director Jim Comey in handcuffs that he filed charges over a picture of seashells on Instagram. Last week, in the same courthouse where Comey is fighting yet a third set of garbage criminal charges, a magistrate tossed the DOJ’s case against two former FBI officials for lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said from the bench, adding that “This case is marketing material to discourage people from joining the FBI.”
The call is coming from inside the house, Todd! And soon, it’ll be coming from the House, too. As a wise man once said, LAWYER UP!
Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:
