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Washington D.C.’s entrenched politicos sprang into action this week before key confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate to try and sink President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
Roughly 1,200 Department of Justice (DOJ) alumni signed off on a letter on Tuesday sent to high-ranking Senate Judiciary Committee leaders demanding they reject elevating Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as he prepares for confirmation hearings next week on July 15 and 16.
Blanche, who previously served as former AG Pam Bondi’s No. 2, has been tapped by the 47th president to do the job permanently, sending the former bureaucrats into a frenzy.
TRUMP SAYS HE WILL NOMINATE ACTING AG TODD BLANCHE TO PERMANENTLY LEAD JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
The signatories of the letter trying to stop the process bill themselves as former DOJ employees from Republican and Democratic administrations, which is true. But even a cursory look at some of the names reveals the letter’s true hyperpartisan nature.
Here are a few:
- Lori Lightfoot, the former mayor of Chicago and a far-left Democrat with a long history of anti-Trump rhetoric.
- JP Cooney, an ex-prosecutor and Democratic congressional candidate who served as Jack Smith’s top deputy during Smith’s special counsel investigation into President Trump over later-dismissed criminal charges. He’s running his campaign on the grounds that he “spent [his] career standing up to powerful people and holding them accountable, including Donald Trump.”
- Aaron Zelinsky, who served as assistant special counsel to former FBI director Robert Mueller during Russiagate, which evidence now suggests was a “manufactured” Obama-era intelligence fabrication to smear Trump.
- Robert Turkavage, who ran for Congress as a Democrat in New Jersey.
- Sara Zdeb, who worked as chief oversight counsel for Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. Durbin is currently the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking member.
- Candice Cook, the former DOJ chief diversity and inclusion officer.
- Sam Bagenstos, a political appointee in both the Biden and Obama administrations with a history of bashing Trump and who also brags about his progressive bona fides on his University of Michigan Law biography page.
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“This list is a who’s who of partisan activists, including liberal politicians such as former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who saw crime drastically rise under her tenure, Trump impeachment witness Pamela Karlan, and multiple former disgruntled Biden administration officials, some of whom were directly involved in the weaponization of the Department,” a DOJ spokesperson told Fox News Digital of the letter.
A former White House official quipped that, “It looks like they passed a petition around the MS NOW green room.”
The Trump DOJ says Blanche has the support of law enforcement.
“Law enforcement throughout the nation supports the nomination of Acting Attorney General Blanche, including the Major Cities Chiefs Association, representing police leadership in dozens of major U.S. cities; the International Association of Chiefs of Police, representing tens of thousands of law enforcement leaders worldwide; and the Major County Sheriffs of America, representing hundreds of the nation’s largest sheriffs’ offices,” the spokesperson said.
The letter itself states that as former DOJ employees, the signatories take seriously their “oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the occupant of the White House.”
It complains that Blanche has fired hundreds of DOJ employees, some of whom, they say, were fired for “having worked on cases the President didn’t like.”
“The consequences of Blanche’s attacks on DOJ’s apolitical workforce radiate beyond the halls of Main Justice, affecting the entire country,” the letter says. “They’ve meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done as well – leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable.”
But the note is eerily reminiscent of another widely-covered stunt that turned out to be a political operation to protect then-presidential candidate Joe Biden during his 2020 election bid.
In that instance, 51 former intelligence officials, including known Trump adversaries former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, penned a letter to the public claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal appeared to be a foreign intelligence operation.
The contents of Hunter Biden’s personal computer, published in October 2020 by the New York Post, contained shocking videos and photos of drug use, lewd sex acts, and sensitive business communications. It eventually was dubbed the “laptop from hell” due to the public relations nightmare it caused for the Biden campaign.
The former intelligence officials immediately jumped to Biden’s defense, claiming the letter had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“Such an operation would be consistent with some of the key methods Russia has used in its now multi-year operation to interfere in our democracy — the hacking (via cyber-operations) and the dumping of accurate information or the distribution of inaccurate or misinformation,” the letter said.
Mainstream news outlets ran with the letter, downplaying the scandal.
By early 2022, many of those same news outlets were forced to report that the emails and files from the laptop were, in fact, authentic after federal investigators looked into the matter.
Clapper was one of the few signatories who answered for the bogus Russian intelligence claim, but he stood by the letter, claiming the ex-intel crowd never said for sure that the laptop was a Russian operation.
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“Yes, I stand by the statement made AT THE TIME, and would call attention to its 5th paragraph,” he told The New York Post. “I think sounding such a cautionary note AT THE TIME was appropriate.”
So it appears the latest actions are just a repeat of the same playbook Democrats have been using to push their agenda against Trump.
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