How will Trump’s former personal lawyer run the US justice department?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Right now, the US Justice Department is probably attracting more scrutiny and coming under more controversy than any time since the Watergate scandal. And that's because America's top prosecutor, the man Donald Trump has put in to be his new Attorney General, has said he doesn't think his department needs to be independent from the White House. There's a big difference between saying we will always do our job and investigate any case and act independently of the White House, no, I'm not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that.

0:34Todd Blanche has a big job ahead of him. He's taking over from his predecessor, who was fired by Donald Trump, who didn't like the way she was doing the job. And he's got to take on everything from the Epstein files to compensation for January the 6th rioters and look at how to pursue Donald Trump's revenge agenda through the Justice Department. So what can we expect from the man who used to be the president's personal lawyer? and how much will he be under Donald Trump's control? Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.

1:12We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

1:31Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC's Washington Bureau. And it's Sumi as well, also sitting alongside Sarah in the Washington Bureau. Yes, and we're running it from D.C. today at what is about 10 o 'clock in the morning for us on Thursday. And Sumi, we should go back, before we dig into Todd Blanchett and his relationship with Donald Trump, to exactly what his post is, how important it is, how crucial in America. How would you describe what the U.S. Attorney General does? It's very different from what the U.K. Attorney General does. Yeah, it's a really important point. And I think one thing that is important to keep in mind as well is people think that, you know, the U.S., of course, has three branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the judicial.

2:12The Attorney General and the Department of Justice is in the executive branch. It's not in the judicial branch. So it is part of the administration. The Attorney General is appointed by the president. he or she is confirmed by the Senate and then takes on that post. And essentially, this person is the administration's top lawyer. There are plenty of norms around how an attorney general should act and a certain independence from the White House and the president. But there aren't necessarily hard and fast laws that actually stipulate what that relationship should be like. And that's part of the controversy we're going to talk about.

2:47Of course, if there is a perceived conflict of interest for the attorney general, you can see them appoint a special counsel. Of course, we had a lot of that under President Biden previously with special counsels looking into cases where the attorney general didn't want to investigate the case himself. In that case, it was Merrick Garland. And the only other real check on the president's appointment of an attorney general is that Senate confirmation hearing. That's where you get to hear some of how that person who is being nominated by the president sees his or her role, which we did, of course, with Todd Blanch.

3:21Because ever since the Watergate scandal, it has been a tradition, hasn't it, although not a law or a constitutional necessity, that the Justice Department operates completely separately from the White House. And they're not seen to be taking orders from the president or doing his political bidding. And that's why this clip of Todd Blanche being interviewed on NBC's Meet the Press at the weekend has been particularly controversial because he was asked precisely how he'll work with Donald Trump in his new role. Can you pledge that the Justice Department will always act independently of the White House?

3:56Well, there's a big difference between saying we will always do our job and investigate any case and act independently of the White House. No, I'm not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that. I will act with integrity. Our prosecutors will act with integrity. We will prosecute without fear or any sort of favor. And that's exactly what we've been doing. And that's what every Department of Justice should do. Well, I guess big picture, if the president asks you to do something that you feel crosses an ethical or legal line, would you do it? The president will never ask me to do something unethical or legal or illegal.

4:32He never has. He never will. And no, I swore to the Constitution of the United States, like every cabinet secretary has done and like every attorney general before me has done. And so this narrative that's mostly pushed by the left and pushed by the media, that the president's going to pull me aside and ask me to do something illegal, is completely a false narrative. Not true, will not happen. Really fascinating, some of the things that he's saying there. This idea that the president never has and never will ask him to do anything unethical or illegal. And also him saying that he doesn't think it is his job to act independently, even though for decades and decades that's been the case.

5:11Let's explore the idea that the president never has and never would ask him to do anything unethical or illegal. Now, obviously, that may depend on your definition of unethical. But I mean, this is the man who is deputy attorney general put together a deal for Donald Trump where not only was there going to be a one point eight billion dollar fund to compensate people, they said, who had been the victims of weaponized justice under Joe Biden. And that would have included people who'd taken part in the January the 6th riot and who even those who had attacked police officers, for instance, potentially in line for a payout.

5:44Massively controversial. But also as part of that deal, this agreement that the president, his family and his companies would never face any kind of IRS tax audit. There's quite a lot of people who would say that was unethical in itself. Well, indeed, Todd Blanch actually had to walk that back, didn't he? Because there were members of his own party, Republican senators in particular, who said this has to be off the table for us to be able to confirm you as attorney general because it is unethical. And of course, President Trump himself has been very wishy-washy on it. He has said he would like to see that fund back in place, but Todd Blanche has said that fund is not coming back.

6:21I think it's also interesting to look at Todd Blanche and who he is and his transformation and just how he will walk that line. I've got to say, I mean, Sarah, to be honest, it's a difficult line for him or any attorney general to walk. And we saw that for his predecessor, Pam Bondi. Of course, he has to weigh up what is right and legal with what the president might want in that post. And if you look at Todd Blanche, so he's someone who didn't kind of go to the elite universities that you might see for a typical attorney general. He studied, you know, not so far from here at American University in Washington, D.C., then went to a law school in Brooklyn.

6:56He then joined the Southern District of New York office as one of the prosecutors there. And I was speaking to a Republican analyst who worked with him that on office, Joe Moreno, who spoke very highly of Todd Blanche and said, I worked with him for 10 years. He is someone you can trust to be an ethical and by the book lawyer for the country and in this case also for the president. But he was actually a registered Democrat, interestingly enough. And it was really in 2019 that you started to see him make this foray into the MAGA world where he took on a case to defend Paul Manafort, who we remember previously from Trump term one in a case about mortgage fraud.

7:34And he got those charges thrown out on double jeopardy. He then became President Trump's personal lawyer, we have to say, in the Stormy Daniels case. And that was when he really was seen by the president's side regularly. In between that, he had joined a law firm, a high-profile law firm in New York. And it was really interesting to see that transformation to really become a defender of President Trump. And after that, when President Trump was obviously setting up his second-term administration, he saw Todd Blanche as the perfect person, previously his personal lawyer to be the deputy attorney general and of course now the attorney general.

8:11Yeah and that in and of itself you know some people would say looks a little bit like a conflict of interest taking somebody who had defended you personally and putting them into the justice department but it's fascinating to look at his background I think because he came from a blue collar upbringing and it seems always felt as though he was a little bit looked down upon by the elite legal firms in New York. He didn't actually do as well in some of the big fancy firms that he worked in as he might have expected to. He wasn't a partner. And a lot of those New York lawyers were a bit sniffy about representing Donald Trump, weren't they?

8:42He was never seen as being from the top drawer. But here you are. Todd Blanche not only takes on his case, he also he left his job with a big firm to go out on his own to defend Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels case. And this was not at a point when it was at all likely that Donald Trump was going to become president again. I mean, he really did look as though he was, you know, suffering politically quite badly. He had all of these different legal cases coming against him. He didn't have a huge amount of support in the political world. So this was a big gamble and demonstrated, and this will be what Donald Trump liked about him, a huge amount of loyalty as well as belief in Donald Trump as a phenomenon as well as a person.

9:21Yeah, I mean, we can listen back to this clip of President Trump praising Todd Blanch at the Rose Garden Club dinner at the White House back in May. We have a man who's doing a great job, I'll tell you. I knew it because he kept me out of jail for years. Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanch, he kept me out of jail. They would indict me left and right. The crooked Democrats, you know, it's amazing. They impeach me, they indict me. And then when I get in office, if I say something like, well, maybe that should be looked into weaponization. It's so interesting, Sarah, when you hear the president there say, weaponization.

9:59During Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing, one senator asked him, how would you define weaponization? And he said, well, I would define it as throwing everything they had at President Trump, more or less. I'm paraphrasing here, but weaponizing the justice system against President Trump. And that goes back to the point of loyalty that you made that is so critical for President Trump. But I guess, you know, the question is being asked, and we heard that interview with Kristen Welker and NBC earlier, how independent should an attorney general be from the White House? Yes, these are norms, but should there be that distance?

10:32And is it reasonable for Todd Blanche to say, I will really carry out the president's wishes as long as they're legal? And as he said, the president will never ask me to do anything that's illegal. Yeah, from what he said about weaponization in his hearings, he's clearly going along Donald Trump's track, which is to be incredibly critical of what they say was the political weaponization of the justice system to target Donald Trump specifically during Joe Biden's term, but to do the same thing themselves and think it's perfectly legitimate for them to use the justice system to target people who, for instance, were involved in some of those prosecutions like Letitia James or political opponents whom they don't like to find ways to try and prosecute them, everybody from the former head of the Federal Reserve to Congress people who were involved in the January the 6th hearings.

11:22And he does seem to be somebody who is prepared to go along with that agenda for Donald Trump. Yeah, you know, I was speaking to a Democrat analyst who used to work for President Obama, and she said to me, back then it would be a controversy if President Obama was seen in the same room as the Attorney General and look at where we are now, where Todd Blanche was actually at an event with President Trump in Long Island recently, where President Trump was at a police department. He was championing his law and order agenda, and Todd Blanche was there with him. And so these norms have been broken. And yes, there are no hard and fast rules around them, or let's say laws designating what Todd Blanche should be in terms of how close he should be to President Trump.

12:06Yes, that is the case. But the question does remain, where does that line get drawn? Where does Todd Blanche say, I cannot do that for the president or I'd advise him against it? And going back to that interview that he had with NBC, he did say further on in that interview, look, you know, the president and I have a relationship where I can get on the phone with him or he gets on the phone with me. And I say, look, we can't do that or that isn't really possible. To think that we always agree on anything simply isn't the case. And that's not what the president wants from the people around him. He wants the people around him to push back on him as well.

12:38But it shows us, I think, doesn't it, just how completely different the way the attorney general's role is being viewed in this White House. If you listen to Joe Biden announcing his pick for attorney general, Merrick Garland, just after the Jan 6th riots, actually, as it happens, and you'll hear a very different idea of what the role is supposed to be. Have a listen to this. More than anything, we need to restore the honor, the integrity, the independence of the Department of Justice in this nation that's been so badly damaged. And so many former leaders of that department in both parties have so testified and stated that.

13:17I want to be clear to those who lead this department, who you will serve. You won't work for me. You are not the president or the vice president's lawyer. Your loyalty is not to me. It's to the law, the Constitution, the people of this nation to guarantee justice. Very clear message there from Joe Biden. And if you put that directly up against what we heard from Todd Blanche in his interview, they have a different vision of what the role is. And I think, you know, if Todd Blanche were to be asked, do you serve the president or the Constitution? the way he would answer that in my mind and has answered it in some form is to say well the president defends the constitution so I wouldn't you know both is the answer there the president does what is right and legal and would never do anything else as we've discussed he said so I can say that I'm serving both and I find that a really interesting approach from Todd Blanche is essentially saying that the president is not above the law because he represents the law at all times.

14:23Yeah. But of course, look at Merrick Garland and the way he operated during Joe Biden's presidency, which is he was incredibly cautious and incredibly slow to bring any cases against Donald Trump. Some of the cases against Donald Trump were not federal ones and they were brought by other prosecutors. But Merrick Garland was responsible for deciding whether or not there should be a prosecution around January the 6th, for instance. Now, he had moved quicker on that. we could be in a very, very different situation because that could have come to trial, for instance, which it didn't. It wasn't really even that close to it by the time Donald Trump was re-elected.

15:01But also, if that had gone first, and that's what Donald Trump was in court over, not over the Stormy Daniels payments, not over some of the more minor issues that he was prosecuted for in New York, where people did think there was a bit of legal overreach. But if there was a big federal case looking at whether or not he incited the January the 6th riots, That could have completely changed the political story about the way he was able to spin the legal cases against him, make himself sound like a victim of weaponized justice. Merrick Garland could have changed history if he had moved with a little bit more political insight, shall we say, when he was looking at those cases.

15:35I have seen that frustration from so many Democrat analysts and pundits over the last few years to say Merrick Garland failed at his job for not bringing one of those cases. That being said, he, as you said, was being extremely cautious, understanding the position that Donald Trump held still in society. And yes, of course, after January 6th, we saw Donald Trump go off to Mar-a-Lago and he wasn't really in the public eye in the same way that he was obviously when he was president. But even in the last year before he started campaigning again, and the idea that it could be perceived as lawfare to go after the former president, that there are so many precedents that are being broken.

16:15by taking on such a case, you get the sense that that really weighed on Merrick Garland and his Department of Justice. Interesting to hear that, you know, Joe Biden himself was frustrated with Merrick Garland for not moving fast enough. And I think that reflects what many on the Democrat side of the political aisle felt. The whole reason Todd Blanchett has this job is that his previous boss, Pam Bondi, was fired by Donald Trump, in part because she wasn't aggressively enough pursuing his enemies in court. But also the handling of the Epstein files had been very politically inept, frankly, by the Justice Department up until that point.

16:50So it's one of the big tests I think Todd Blanch is going to face. And actually, we've had a question about that from Janine in Australia. She wants to know where the conversation is going about the Epstein files, because it doesn't seem to be mentioned anymore. And she says she would hate to think it was not being pursued, because there's still so much to do in that respect in terms of honouring the victims. And so Janine's right, it has gone a little bit quiet on the Epstein front, but it's unlikely to stay that way. Yeah, very unlikely to stay that way. This was one of the questions that came up many times during the confirmation hearing for Todd Blanche, and a lot of survivors in particular are worried about his appointment.

17:25Todd Blanche oversaw the disclosure of the documents after the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. A lot of survivors were unhappy about some of the redactions that were made, some of the information that was omitted. And this is going to be a real point of pressure for Todd Blanch as well. Not to mention that there are still millions more files to be released, and Todd Blanch is going to be under pressure not just from survivors, but we know Democrats will bring this up with him as well, that they want to see those remaining files released. And those redactions where survivors say, you're not protecting us, make sure these names are unredacted because they want to see some form of justice, whether that means that, you know, people lose their positions in wherever they're working or in society at the moment because of their involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, then that is at least the Epstein survivors I've spoken to have told me some form of justice for them.

18:20Can Todd Blanchett deliver that? This is not going to be an easy one. And again, he didn't get off on the right foot with the survivors by not meeting them when they asked him to. And let's not forget, he's the one who went to see Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, hoping that she would give the administration something that would completely clear Donald Trump. Because at that point, there was a great deal of suspicion that the reason that the files weren't being released was because there was information in there that would embarrass Donald Trump. So he went to see Ghislaine Maxwell, hoping that she would give some kind of testimony, completely absolving the president, and then surprise, surprise, ended up being moved to a much lower security facility after that, after his visit with her.

19:03So, I mean, he is neck deep in the Epstein files, isn't he? And he is going to have to answer some questions about that. One of the things I'll be looking out for is, is he going to be more successful than Pam Bondi was with that? Of course, she kind of set herself up by when President Trump entered office for a second term saying, wait, the Epstein files are on my desk, you know, these influencers who left the White House with these binders and then having to issue the statement from the Department of Justice saying there is no client list, there's nothing to look at here. That set up some of the massive controversy that then followed, of course, for the Department of Justice and for Pam Bondi herself.

19:40For Todd Blanch, I mean, what the vice president J.D. Vance had said in one interview was that the communications surrounding the release of the Epstein files was completely bungled. And you get the sense that the administration knows that and will handle it differently now. But the reality is they don't want to see any attention brought to this issue at all in the next year or two leading up to the 2028 presidential election. And Democrats will continue to bring light and attention to this issue. So how does Todd Blanche handle that? As I said earlier, he has a few very difficult lines to tread, and this is going to be one of them.

20:14Now, I know you need to shoot, Sumi, don't you? You've got other things that you need to be doing. So thank you very much for once again joining us on AmeriCast. Very, very nice to be here with you. But Marianna is standing by in London to come and talk to us. How are you doing, Marianna? I'm good, thank you. It's like a sort of one-in-one-out AmeriCast presenter ordeal. Hi and bye. Thanks for having me. So, Marianna, perfect timing, not least because the politics in the US has gone a bit slow. Congress is on holiday. It's August, there's not so much happening. So dominating the headlines here is this court case in California against Meta.

20:56And I'll be honest, I don't understand all the ins and outs of this. What I do know is that this is a huge case in which Meta is being accused of damaging young people, essentially, with the way it operates. There are a string of cases unfolding in the US against the major social media companies, Meta in this case, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. And a lot of those cases are centred around individual stories, individual people, individual claimants. This particular case is of interest because of the scale, which is that you've got 29 states that have kind of jointly filed this lawsuit, which they filed in 2023, where they essentially claim, I mean, they focus on privacy laws for children.

21:43But more broadly, the allegations that they're making are that the companies are causing harm to younger users, teenagers, kids, and doing so knowingly. So the idea that it's not just an accidental byproduct of their products, but rather that they know that to be the consequence and continue anyways. And crucially, this is about the design of the platform. So it's not actually just about particular bits of content that get recommended. This is about the way that the platforms function, like their algorithmic systems, the different features that they have. and what these states are seeking is up to billions of dollars in damages, which could be really crippling for a company like Meta.

22:25And would it force them to stop operating in this way? Would we actually see a very, very different kind of social media where it is less addictive, you're not endlessly, infinitely scrolling and that kind of thing? Yeah, I think there's a possibility that will be the case. I mean, if you look at it from a, and I've spoken to quite a few people from within the companies about this, if you look at it from the perspective of the social media companies, their kryptonite, the thing that makes them so successful is the design of the platforms, the stuff that keeps you scrolling, the stuff that keeps you watching and reading and engaging.

22:55Now, they would argue, well, we're giving people what they want to see. This is, you know, this is a pleasurable or often positive experience for them, which, you know, there are positives to social media sites, as we know. And therefore, all of this is just part of optimising how our platforms work. The counter argument and the argument that these states are making is essentially that actually know these design features which give us what we want inverted commas give us stuff that we want that is actually harmful to us particularly if you're a kid or a teenager and that is the problem here and you've designed these features knowing that to be the case with this case we could see specific features that they have to deal with so things like infinite scroll sarah like when you when you are on instagram and you just keep going just endlessly keep going there used to be a time i don't even remember it where you'd get to the bottom of your feed and it would be like you're all caught up now no more none of that so that could change and things like being able to see likes and being able to see interactions on posts that sort of stuff could change and just everything around how the algorithms work like there's a real lack of transparency about why you're recommended what you're recommended why something blows up in the way that it does all of that could change which would be very complex and also very very expensive for a company like Meta.

24:06Now, I've read interviews and books from former employees alleging not only that this stuff was designed to keep people addicted to it, but that the companies knew that. Does that intent matter at all in this case? I think it does to some extent, because it's proving that there's an issue with design that needs to be remedied. And if you are designing something, there's a level of intent there, right? It's like you have made conscious decisions around what that product or feature looks like and those conscious decisions were informed by and this is the argument being made against meta were informed by the research that you did the people you employed understanding the impact on users of the product you're offering and that's not to say by the way that you know two things could effectively be true which is that meta deliberately designed features that optimize the user experience quote-unquote and therefore keep them on the platform and that they also have systems in place to mitigate harm which is true they do like they have guidelines they have systems for reporting stuff but if this trial finds that there are fundamental flaws in their systems that actually the way it's designed is the problem then it sets a kind of massive precedent really and we've already seen you know a couple of cases go through which they've lost um but because those were a smaller scale there's a slight feeling of like whack-a-mole it's kind of like oh well actually will that lead to a mass overhaul of their system And they've actually just had to pay out some money, which is still significant money.

25:30But remember, these companies are really, really rich. And there's been quite a lot of comparisons there with big tobacco, right? People are suggesting that this is sort of a similar moment for the social media companies. Yeah, and that's a fascinating comparison, not just because of the enormous consequence that some of the legal cases had for the tobacco industry, but how late it came. It's really surprising to realize that it was in the 1990s that big tobacco firms finally lost some of these cases. People knew for decades the harm that tobacco could do, but they couldn't quite pin down the link between smoking and lung cancer and the way the companies were operating.

26:11And that took such a long time. And it feels as though there may be something similar here that you said at the beginning. You know, it's a no brainer that the way that these platforms are designed suck people in and end up becoming addictive. But it's actually pinning it down in a court of law and forcing change through the legal system can take a lot longer than common sense does to work out what's going on. And I think that's one of the ways in which this is quite analogous to big tobacco as well as what the consequences could be for the industry. I think the key part that is maybe different to what happened with tobacco here is that it's very hard to prove a cause and effect when it comes to the real world consequences of social media.