Top ethics expert claims the new DOJ assurances are a complete scam

Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general cleared a major hurdle this week after two Republican senators who had raised concerns agreed to back him. Blanche gave written assurances that a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” designed to pay Trump allies would not be resurrected, and that a settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service only gave the president retroactive immunity from audits rather than perpetual protection. The Senate Judiciary Committee votes on Blanche’s nomination Tuesday, with the full Senate expected to vote later in the week. Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and acting attorney general since April, has been central in many of the administration’s most controversial episodes, including prosecutions of Trump opponents and the botched rollout of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

If confirmed, Blanche would entrench a culture of corruption at the Justice Department, warns legal expert Norm Eisen. “There have been a series of offenses against the rule of law, miscarriages of justice,” he tells Democracy Now!

Eisen is co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund. He previously served as White House special counsel for ethics and government reform in the Obama administration. The Justice Department recently dropped charges against his client, former Olympic athlete Davey Hearn, who had been accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, later in the broadcast, we’re going to go to an exhibit about to open in Chicago about the life and death of Emmett Till. But first, this top news: Todd Blanche’s nomination to become the next attorney general appears to be back on track after Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina said they will now support his confirmation.

On Sunday, Blanche issued a written order that purports to rescind a $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund, what many call a slush fund, that was part of a controversial settlement of Trump’s personal lawsuit against the IRS. Blanche also said in writing the immunity agreement Trump struck with the IRS applies only retroactively. But critics say there are major loopholes in Blanche’s written assurances.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is voting on Blanche’s nomination today. Blanche, who is Trump’s former personal defense attorney, first told senators, “We are not moving forward with the fund,” during a hearing last month.

ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: We are not moving forward with the fund, period. We — the reasons for the fund is something that President Trump talked about for a long time, which is the fact that there were a lot of people in this country who had their government weaponized against them. The reasons for the fund, I think, were — remain as important as they were before, but we are not moving forward with the fund.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s what he said. But until this weekend, he didn’t put it in writing. And we’ll find out if the writing matters.

This comes as U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro Friday dropped the case against the former U.S. Olympian canoeist Davey Hearn, accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. On June 19th, Hearn stopped by the pool while on a 64-mile bike ride. He says he touched the pool to see what it felt like and was then arrested, handcuffed, held for five hours by U.S. Park Police. He was then charged with a felony. Prosecutors in Washington also dropped charges against three others who were similarly accused of damaging the pool.

President Trump, in response, blasted the U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who said the damage to the Reflecting Pool was ultimately due to poor construction and not to vandalism as Trump had claimed for months. In her filing, Pirro blamed the Department of Interior, DOI, for failing to provide accurate documentation on the case before her office wrote the indictment. Pirro said her office had received new information showing the damage was, quote, “the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by DOI,” unquote. Pirro also blamed Trump over his demands to finish the pool’s renovation by the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July Fourth. She said, “The rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work that was not remediated before the project was finished and the fencing removed. … Given all this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism,” unquote. The filing contradicted Pirro’s initial claim that there was “tremendous evidence” of vandalism.

Meanwhile, CNN spoke to sources who said Trump was furious and considering removing Pirro as U.S. attorney. Trump met with Pirro at the White House Monday. He spoke from the Oval Office.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That was the one mistake with the Reflecting Pool, and they hadn’t put up the cameras yet. They had enough up, because you see what’s happening. But if they would have had them up, we would have had a lot of — it would have been a lot easier. But — and I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro. She — she folded like an umbrella. And people get away with things, and it’s a disgrace.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, one of Davey Hearn’s attorneys. He was White House special counsel for ethics and government reform in the Obama administration, considered Obama’s ethics adviser.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Norm. We last had you on when Davey was charged. Now the charges have been dropped. I want to talk about both Davey Hearn and Blanche, Blanche now signing this statement that some say is actually not worth too much, that Trump could re-sign an executive order almost immediately around getting rid of the $1.8 million slush fund, and the whole question of Trump being audited retroactively, his tax returns, his children’s and his businesses’. Why don’t you start there?

NORM EISEN: Well, Amy, at Democracy Defenders Fund, we represent 35 former federal judges, appointed by presidents of both parties, who filed in the federal district court in Florida, Judge Williams, that oversaw the underlying dispute that gave rise to the slush fund and the associated purported releases for Donald Trump and his family. And the judges made the point that there’s no case or controversy. It’s not a real dispute between Donald Trump and the federal government. And under the Constitution, you have to have a dispute in order to have a slush fund or in order to have these kinds of releases.

The judge, in response to our papers, found that there was no legal basis for this, ordered that you can’t even refer to these documents, including the one Blanche signed, as settlements. And we’re continuing to litigate that. So, we have profound concerns about the whole mess. We’re going to keep going in court. And it just is not right to take this $1.8 billion, to try to take it away from the American people. And then, the additional documents filed by Mr. Blanche with the Senate don’t really materially change the fundamental illegality of the whole thing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, what about this whole issue that what has survived is this retroactive immunity for Trump and his sons and the Trump Organization on any tax charges or investigations?

NORM EISEN: The releases, supposed releases, can’t be valid if there was never an underlying claim or controversy, a constitutional basis to start the case. It’s just a giveaway to the president. It’s a shock that our Department of Justice would engage in that behavior. These documents that Mr. Blanche filed with the Senate don’t really change that. And we’re going to keep on going in court to make sure that this is never acted upon. I think if Donald Trump ever tried to use that to say, “Hey, I got a release,” courts could throw it out. They could refuse to recognize it. The whole thing is an example, one of the worst examples, of the corruption of the Trump administration.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk in general about the role of Todd Blanche since he was named attorney general?

NORM EISEN: Well, it’s been profoundly concerning. There have been a series of offenses against the rule of law, miscarriages of justice. And we saw that with the wrongful prosecutions of Tish James, of Jim Comey, David Huerta, the labor leader in California. I was part of that defense team. That case was just thrown out. He was prosecuted for peacefully protesting. They had to drop that case. And that, of course, brings us to the case of Mr. Hearn. Of all of the things that we can say about the Department of Justice, the single worst thing that it has done under Todd Blanche’s leadership is go after innocent people. That’s the opposite of justice, should be called the Department of Injustice.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what happens with Davey Hearn now? And can other charges be brought? And do you think U.S. Attorney Pirro is out?

NORM EISEN: Well, the latest reporting after yesterday’s meeting was that she had not offered her resignation. Her resignation had not been requested at that meeting. We’ll see if that turns out to be the case.

Look, Davey Hearn was innocent. We’ve said so from the very beginning of this case. The Department of Justice knew he was innocent. We started filing a series of motions the day after the arraignment. We filed one with before-and-after pictures based on the government’s own evidence, showing that the Reflecting Pool was unchanged after Mr. Hearn touched it. It was the same before as it was after.

So, it’s appropriate that the Department of Justice has requested the court to drop the charges. I think it would be pretty tough, also terribly wrong, to charge Mr. Hearn again, after the admissions that the Department of Justice has made in their filing at the end of last week that they can’t establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that they don’t have evidence that the damage that they claimed actually happened, that the cause of the damage to the Reflecting Pool was a botched and rushed renovation.

AMY GOODMAN: And let’s remember, this botched and —

NORM EISEN: So, we’re going to —

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s remember, this botched renovation was as a result of a no-bid contract given to a friend of President Trump. Norm Eisen, we’re going to leave it there, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, one of Davey Hearn’s attorneys, was White House special counsel for ethics and government reform in the Obama administration.