Right Hand Man
Todd Blanche is the second most powerful prosecutor in the United States. As Deputy Attorney General (DAG) in the Department of Justice, he is the “Chief Operating Officer”. While Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, is in charge, it is Blanche who makes most of the day-to-day decisions. Bondi sets the direction, Blanche steers the Department. It’s a “big job” for whoever gets the role.
Ask Rod Rosenstein, the DAG in the first Trump Administration. While the Attorneys General changed, from Sessions, to Whittaker, to Barr; it was Rosenstein who bore the brunt of balancing a Department that was first investigating the newly elected President, then defending him, then investigating the investigators. Whatever you think of the outcomes, Rosenstein was at the center of the storm.
Most DAG’s rise up through the Justice Department. Some, like Rosenstein, come in as political appointments from US Attorney’s offices (Rosenstein in Baltimore). But Mr. Blanche took a different route. While he did serve as a line prosecutor in the Southern District of New York for nearly a decade, he left the Department to go into private practice. It was in the course of that private work that he was hired by the client that made his career: Donald Trump.
Blanche represented Trump in the 34 felony-count criminal indictment for falsifying business records regarding the Stormy Daniels payoff. Trump was found guilty on all counts (as President-elect the penalties were dismissed). Despite the loss, Blanche remained as one of Trump’s most trusted aides. That confidence showed in Blanche’s elevation to the second highest office in the Justice Department.
Room Where it Happened
So when a similar situation from Donald Trump’s private life arose, he sent Blanche in to “put out the fire”. Jeffrey Epstein, friend of Trump and purveyor of underage children for sexual exploitation by the rich and famous; died mysteriously in a Federal prison cell in New York. Whatever he knew, went to the grave with him. But Epstein’s own “chief operating officer”, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving twenty years in Federal prison. And when the EPSTEIN FILES!! scandal broke last month, Trump needed to know what she would say. Who else but Todd Blanche, the DAG, would talk to Maxwell for nine hours in a Tallahassee Federal Courthouse.
We don’t know what was said. What we do know is one side of the “quid-pro-quo”. Maxwell was soon moved from a medium security facility near Tallahassee, to a Federal prison “camp” in Bryan, Texas. Department policy prevents convicted sex offenders from the more relaxed confinement in a “camp” type-facility, but Maxwell is there anyway. Whatever the “other side” of the quid-pro-quo was, it must be enough to warrant a public exception for the “luxury” child sex-trafficker.
Elmendorf
President Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. Putin is under indictment for war crimes by the World Court, and is waging a war of aggression in Ukraine. But Trump ignored all that, and invited Putin to the United States; Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. He literally rolled out the “red carpet” for him. Putin even was given a private ride with Mr. Trump in the Presidential limousine, and an airshow featuring America’s most advance weapons, F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers.
Trump invited Putin so he could discuss ending the war in Ukraine. There were elaborate plans for a closed meeting, followed by a luncheon, and then talks between the aides from both sides, in hopes of hammering out an arrangement to end the three year conflict and to bring Russia back into the world economy.
It didn’t happen.
Room Where it Happened
We don’t know fully what the private conversation between Putin and Trump was about. In terms of Ukraine, Putin made it clear that he would not withdraw from any of the captured territory, and would only accept a ceasefire-in-place with several conditions that the Ukrainians would clearly reject. That was a foreseeable result: it’s clear that Putin is still set on conquering Ukraine and making it a part of Russia (again). The longer the war lasts, the more to Putin’s advantage. A ceasefire doesn’t help him.
Trump said that Putin affirmed all of Trump’s biggest domestic assertions: that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 election, and would not dare invade Ukraine if Trump were in office in 2022. The American President also said that Putin “knew” that the election of 2020 was rigged against him. (Trump didn’t say that Putin knew Trump’s name wasn’t in the EPSTEIN FILES!!, but that might be next).
Putin walked out of the first meeting, made a statement to the press, and went home: no lunch, no second meeting, no talks between aides. Putin got what he wanted: international acknowledgment as a “leader of a powerful nation”, not an indicted war criminal. Trump served to legitimize Putin’s authority, even as the Russian dictator launched more attacks against civilians in Ukraine.
That was the “quid”, but there seems to be no “pro quo”. Todd Blanche managed to silence Maxwell for the moment, but what did Trump get? In terms of Ukraine, it seems like nothing. But, was there something else that Putin “gave” Trump in return?
We don’t know, No one was in “the room where it happened”.
PS: credit where credit is due: “right hand man” and “in the room where it happens (happened) are from Hamilton, The Musical – which continues to reverberate in our household as we contend with the second Trump Administration. And, of course the “Tale of Two Deals” harkens back to Charles Dickens.
