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 \u201cChief Operating Officer\u201d. 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\u2019s a \u201cbig job\u201d for whoever gets the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most DAG\u2019s rise up through the Justice Department. Some, like Rosenstein, come in as political appointments from US Attorney\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s most trusted aides. That confidence showed in Blanche\u2019s elevation to the second highest office in the Justice Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when a similar situation from Donald Trump\u2019s private life arose, he sent Blanche in to \u201cput out the fire\u201d. 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\u2019s own \u201cchief operating officer\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don\u2019t know what was said. What we do know is one side of the \u201cquid-pro-quo\u201d. Maxwell was soon moved from a medium security facility near Tallahassee, to a Federal prison \u201ccamp\u201d in Bryan, Texas. Department policy prevents convicted sex offenders from the more relaxed confinement in a \u201ccamp\u201d type-facility, but Maxwell is there anyway. Whatever the \u201cother side\u201d of the quid-pro-quo was, it must be enough to warrant a public exception for the \u201cluxury\u201d child sex-trafficker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201cred carpet\u201d for him. Putin even was given a private ride with Mr. Trump in the Presidential limousine, and an airshow featuring America\u2019s most advance weapons, F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s advantage. A ceasefire doesn\u2019t help him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump said that Putin affirmed all of Trump\u2019s biggest domestic assertions: that Russia didn\u2019t 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 \u201cknew\u201d that the election of 2020 was rigged against him. (Trump didn\u2019t say that Putin knew Trump\u2019s name wasn\u2019t in the EPSTEIN FILES!!, but that might be next).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cleader of a powerful nation\u201d, not an indicted war criminal. Trump served to legitimize Putin\u2019s authority, even as the Russian dictator launched more attacks against civilians in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was the \u201cquid\u201d, but there seems to be no \u201cpro quo\u201d. 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 \u201cgave\u201d Trump in return? <\/p>\n\n\n\n We don\u2019t know, No one was in \u201cthe room where it happened\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n