[0:00]to this hearing. when we consider Todd Blanche's nomination. to serve as the eighty-eighth Attorney General of the United States. Congratulations, Mr. Blanche, on your appointment.
[0:16]Thank you, Chairman. Uh these are the ground rules for this meeting. I'll handle this hearing as our committee handled the nominations of attorneys General Bondi
[0:33]and Garland I want everyone to be able to watch without obstruction. If people blocked the view of those behind them. or speak out of turn. It's not fair
[0:48]It's not considerate so officers will immediately remove that person or persons. uh I'm going to give my opening remarks and then ranking member Durban
[1:05]will give his remarks Then I'll call on Senator Moody. to introduce the nominee. following that introduction, Mr. Blanche will provide
[1:17]his opening statement. and then we'll we'll turn to questions Each senator will have 10 minutes to ask. questions
[1:32]my my standard approach has been that if you got 1 2nd left as a member of the committee, you can ask your question. but after the
[1:45]questions answered, I'm going to move on to the next member. Mr. Blanche, thank you for being here. As I've said before this is
[1:59]one of the most important offices in our country. You went through a rough Senate confirmation, a little over a year ago. so you know all about it I appreciate that you cooperated with this committee at every step
[2:14]and fulfilled your responsibilities in good faith, while simultaneously running the world's uh largest law firm. office The Senate has
[2:27]already judged your fitness for high office and confirmed you as the department's second in command. Today we consider you for a promotion. and we're not starting out from a blank slate. You have a track record.
[2:47]My Democratic colleagues have relentlessly attacked the department and your and President Trump's leadership. They've called the department quote unquote, a disgrace
[3:02]and suggests that the agency is broken. There media allies and activist networks have echoed that message.
[3:15]Are these assertions correct? Let's put aside partisan criticism for a moment and address the evidence. The Department primary duty is to enforce our nation's laws and to keep Americans
[3:34]safe. So how is the department stacking up? The answer is for those who care to judge fir fairly. It's a record of success. The United States has the lowest murder
[3:49]rate since 1900. The FBI has captured 8 of the top 10 most wanted fugitives. violent crime, arrests arrests by the FBI
[4:03]are up 184%. more than 849 individuals have been disrupted from conducting terrorist attacks. The ATF has seized more than 44,000
[4:20]illegal firearms. that is not a failure. What about the department's record on illegal drugs? Since January of last year, the DEA has made more than 6300 fentanyl arrests.
[4:40]It has it has seized more than 5000 kg of fentanyl powder. 55 million fentanyl pills.
[4:57]2,240,000 kg of methamphetamine. and 1 and 2 10 million kg of cocaine. The fentanyl alone amounts to more than 428 million fatal seizures.
[5:15]That is not a failure. And what about protecting children. Our committee has fought for years. on a bipartisan basis. to protect our nation's children from the horrors of exploitation.
[5:31]Ranking member Durbin and I in a bipartisan way, our leading landmark legislation. the James T. Woods Act to tackle that very issue, and once again our partners at the Justice Department
[5:47]have a record of success. The FBI has arrested 2900 child predators and human traffickers. A 70% increase from 2024 and
[6:02]located more than 6940 child victims. The US Marshals have recovered more than 1,182 missing children.
[6:16]That doesn't sound like failure to me. In contrast, the Biden administration diverted prosecutors from child sex crime cases on January 6 cases
[6:30]that is unbelievable. My Democrat colleagues have criticized the Justice Department for a lack of transparency. I've been critical as well as I am with every administration,
[6:45]whoever occupies the Oval Office when we don't get that cooperation. No one cares more about oversight than I do. in all my years of congressional
[6:59]oversight. This department has been the most responsive to my requests. That means every Republican or Democrat administration previous to this one. and the numbers back this up.
[7:15]Since January of last year, the department has produced approximately 43,000 pages of records in response to requests from the Senate and the House. to put that in perspective, that's approximately 3 times
[7:32]the number of records produced. an equivalent time by the Biden Justice Department. The Department has also released more than 3. 3/10 million
[7:45]pages of additional records with more coming every day. Their work is not done, and I expect continued responsiveness and as well the
[7:57]very important thing of declassification. but credit should be given where credit is due. A few more successes. They've established the National Fraud Enforcement
[8:11]Division to address more than $5 billion in fraud against American taxpayers. They've reduced the immigration case log by more than 468,000. They've challenged and eliminated racist and unlawful discrimination
[8:29]in government and the private sector, they're exposing and redressing the Biden era weaponization of the Department against Political opponents.
[8:41]They've captured and are prosecuting the dictator Nicholas Maduro for crimes related to narco-terrorism. The list goes on This department
[8:54]is keeping Americans safe, and the numbers back that up. Mr. Blanche, you should take pride in delivering the law enforcement promise the American people voted for in 2024. But at the hearing today we might
[9:13]expect the opposite by Democratic colleagues will talk about uh these, uh, they won't talk about these successes. I expect the same playbook that we've seen for nearly every one of President Trump's
[9:28]nominees. pure partisan obstruction. and partisan attack. This approach is the same one that we've seen over and over. In fact, it becomes such a pattern
[9:43]that I'll just quote myself from a speech I delivered almost a year ago regarding another nominee. Last July, I said, quote, Since the very beginning of this Congress, Democrats have engaged in relentless
[9:57]obstruction campaign for nearly one of President Trump's nominees. Their playbook has included maximum procedural obstruction. unfair media attacks. repeated attempts to allege misconduct and
[10:13]demands for delayed consideration, records and investigations. like clockwork just before a hearing or a vote, we get another breathless accusation that one of President Trump's nominees needs to be investigated.
[10:30]End of my quote of last January. So here we are again just like clockwork. The Democrats and their media allies and activist networks have launched the expected crusade against your nomination.
[10:47]To be clear, there are fair questions for Mr. Lynch. I don't agree with how Mr. Blanchard, the Justice Department has handled every matter, and I've demanded answers and will continue
[11:00]to do so, but many of the criticisms aired in recent days just completely missed the mark, and I'll give one example. We've seen a coordinated campaign from former Justice Department employees opposing Mr. Blanche's
[11:16]nomination by Democratic colleagues in the partisan media have publicized their letter framing the signators as a group of nonpartisan quote unquote career civil servants. Of course, they failed to mention
[11:32]in that letter. was coordinated by the same group. that engaged in partisan and misleading campaigns opposing Judge Bovey's nomination.
[11:45]They also don't mention that the letter's signatures include a who's who of partisan activists, including former Chicago Mayor Laura Lightfoot, and Jack Smith's partisan prosecutors, JP
[12:00]Cooney, Molly Gaston and David Rhode. And they certainly don't mention that Mr. Blanche has received letters of support from organizations representing more than 600,000 law enforcement officers, 23 state
[12:17]attorneys general and scores of former Justice Department officials. So, from my vantage point if the people who engaged in, in the worst partisan lawfare
[12:32]lawfare of this country has ever seen, have a problem with Todd Blanche, uh, that's a good thing in my book As sure as sunrise. Today, some of my Democratic colleagues will
[12:47]tell us that Mr. Branch has unique uniquely terrible nominee. before they do so, however, I urge them to remember the boy who cried,
[12:59]Wolf. and take a long look in the mirror. before lecturing anyone about partisanship at the Justice Department. So I have one more subject. I'd like to discuss developments
[13:14]in May and Senator Johnson's Jack Smith investigation. Smith's team subpoenaed the National Archives June 2023. That subpoena sought
[13:28]text messages. from cell phones connected to Trump's White House staffers. The date range for the records was October 1, 2020.
[13:41]to January 20th, 2021. The archives then General Consul, Gary Stern emailed Thomas Windham. one of Smith's deputies. on
[13:55]August 21st, 2023, at 12:19 p.m. That email said responsive records were ready. on August 21, the same day. 2023,
[14:13]just uh 2 seconds later Wyndham had already downloaded the text. and shortly after that, other DOJ and FBI personnel involved in the case did as well.
[14:27]Whistleblowers told my office that Smith didn't pass these records through a filler team, and you can see in 20 minutes, there wasn't time to go to a filter. A team that filled the team was already in
[14:40]place. The Justice Department has confirmed that fact in a letter to the committee, quote, the special counsel's investigative team, apparently by bypassed the filter team and directly access these
[14:55]text messages, end of quote. The DOJ letter to the committee. also said, quote, the special counsel's office had previously been made aware of the risks that records relating to members, meaning
[15:10]members of Congress, communications could raise constitutional questions and might be privileged under the speed and and debate clause, end of quote that speech and debate clause is a constitutional issue
[15:26]Even if Smith's team had been instructed to look for congressional or other privileged information. It wouldn't matter because in this example, it appears the filter team was entirely bypassed.
[15:40]Based on the information provided to the committee, Smith's Operation cut corners and blew through constitutional stop signs instead of respecting them and having been advised about the constitutional
[15:54]problems. The White House messages obtained and reviewed by Smith's team included communications with many senators and representatives. The communications included messages with members on this committee,
[16:11]including this senator. The subject matter of those members' communication included core constitutional responsibilities, such as congressional legislation resolutions, investigative work. It also included other
[16:26]information irrelevant to Jack Smith's case against then-citizen Trump. Instead of that information being walled off, it was intentionally shared. This is another example of how this misguided investigation
[16:43]wasn't normal and demands further investigation. Jack Smith's operation was a runaway political train that improperly obtained congressional information. I've requested acting Attorney General Blanche to allow
[16:58]members to review these records, Senator Durbin.