Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. President, Procedure · 21 wordsI am here today to join the chorus of opposition to Todd Blanche’s nomination as Attorney General of the United States.Procedure Positioning · 13 wordsThings that Republicans have purported to care about are disastrous with this guy.Positioning Claims · 224 wordsPam Bondi put the blame directly on Todd Blanche for the Department of Justice’s foulup with the Epstein files.¹ That foulup was pretty deadly serious for the women who were victims, who had managed to keep that fact private until Todd Blanche and the DOJ fouled that up and put out their names, put out their addresses, put out their photographs, and in some cases put out photographs with very little clothing on--complete disruption of the lives of the victims of Epstein’s depravity, complete incompetence from a document- production point of view. And on the other side, this guy actually participated in the Epstein coverup. Remember that there was a witness who spoke to FBI agents about having been assaulted by Donald Trump when she was about 14 years old, physically assaulted and sexually assaulted.² She spoke to the FBI at least four times.³ Those four times were recorded in FBI 302s.⁴ A 302 is the FBI name for the witness statement that the agents write up after an interview. So four times this woman has been interviewed about what had happened to her as a girl. Three of those 302s specifically mentioned Donald Trump.⁵ In the disclosure that Todd Blanche made under the Epstein files law, the only one of the four that got disclosed was the one that didn’t mention Donald Trump.⁶ Reasoning · 7 wordsThat ought to be disqualifying right there. Claims · 86 wordsLuckily, some very sharp investigators realized through, like, gaps in Bates stamp numbers that documents were missing and that the three 302s had not been disclosed.⁷ And so Blanche was forced to cough those up. But behind a 302 come the agent notes. And there are still 37 pages of documents relating to that that are still suppressed, that are still covered up, that look to be the agents’ notes, ⁸which should have been disclosed. So the coverup continued with respect to allegations against Donald Trump. Procedure · 6 wordsWhere else did the coverup continue?Procedure Claims · 61 wordsWell, the Treasury Department sent to the Department of Justice what are called suspicious activity reports.⁹ A suspicious activity report is what you get when international banking transactions look like something funny is afoot, look like there is, for instance, money laundering going on. In this case, it was money laundering and human- trafficking concerns that provoked the suspicious activity reports.¹⁰ Aside · 37 wordsYou don’t have to be a genius investigator to look at a suspicious activity report and deduce it might have something to do with some suspicious activity. It is the title of the report, for Pete’s sake.Aside Claims · 137 wordsBillions of dollars of transactions were behind those suspicious activity reports.¹¹ How many were investigated by the Blanche Department of Justice? Zero.¹² Turned a complete blind eye to that whole aspect of the Epstein files, even though the suspicious activity reports were right in front of them. And then he goes running down to Tallahassee to interview Epstein’s comrade-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell.¹³ Did he use that interview to develop any new information, to go after people who were culpable in the Epstein files? No. He used that interview to extract exculpatory comments from her about Donald Trump. Oh, that he was a perfect gentleman. And the next thing you know, she is rewarded with a transfer to a Club Fed-type prison.¹⁴ What is the excuse for that? Oh, she was at risk. We felt she was in danger. Anecdote · 12 wordsWell, look, I have been around law enforcement for a long time, AnecdoteReasoning · 47 wordsand this is the first time I have ever seen a prisoner allegedly in danger be transferred to a less secure setting to solve the problem of danger. Right? You move the prisoner to a more secure setting, not a less secure setting. It makes no sense. Positioning · 16 wordsSo in the Epstein files, Todd Blanche’s fingerprints are all over the screwup and the coverup.Positioning Claims · 169 wordsThen we move on to the slush fund and the Trump family tax fraud amnesty, which was cooked up in a deal surrounding a Federal court proceeding, ¹⁵which was such a mess that the judge in that Federal court proceeding has gone back to look at what the heck happened. She was looking at whether something happened called fraud upon the court.¹⁶ You probably haven’t heard of fraud upon the court. It is unusually rare. It is a thermonuclear ethics accusation. We have looked. In the history of the Department of Justice, fraud on the court has not even been alleged against any senior DOJ official--ever.¹⁷ Ever. And here you have a court that opened a proceeding, an inquiry, into whether or not there was fraud on the court, and that is still pending. There is still every reason to believe that Blanche may be found culpable for putting a fraud on the court together to cook up the slush fund tax amnesty scheme. That is pretty unheard of. Positioning · 30 wordsUnfortunately, it is not uncommon in this Blanche Department of Justice. There is a cascade of criticism from Federal courts about misconduct by this Department of Justice--misconduct that is unprecedented.Positioning Anecdote · 16 wordsI will tell you that I was the U.S. attorney for the District of Rhode Island.¹⁸Anecdote Reasoning · 65 wordsIf judges had used words like this about my attorneys’ conduct in their courtrooms, there would have been consequences. At a minimum, there would have been staff meetings. There could have been referrals to the Office of Professional Responsibility. There could have been apologies required to the court. There could have been a reboot, internal office discipline of what is going on with this case. Claims · 46 wordsBut when a judge says that the government’s argument is disingenuous, when the judge says that the government’s argument is a pretext for something else, when the judge says that the government has engaged in bad faith, each one of those is a four-alarm fire word.Logical leap Reasoning · 31 wordsIn medicine, there are things that they call never events, things that should never happen in a hospital that you protect against, these are never event words coming from Federal judges. Positioning · 15 wordsAnd yet they are commonplace in the corrupted Department of Justice run by Todd Blanche.Positioning The ask · 79 wordsAs to his complicity in the Epstein files coverup, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from Epstein survivors to Senators Tillis and Cornyn be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks. With respect to the destruction of the Department of Justice that he has wrought, I would also ask that we add George Will’s column called ``Against Todd Blanche.’’<sup>19</sup> I ask unanimous consent that the article entitled ``Against Todd Blanche’’ be printed in the Record. Procedure · 16 wordsThere being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:Procedure