CNN reporter reveals 'unusual' setup at closed press swearing-in ceremony

President Donald Trump’s new attorney general, Todd Blanche, is taking over a Justice Department that one legal expert warns has lost credibility with judges due its politically-motivated prosecutions. Yet according to a CNN reporter, Blanche’s swearing-in was unusual for an additional reason — namely, the fact that two of Trump’s personal lawyers were present during the ceremony.

“Both in these roles and also two lawyers that as the attorney to Donald Trump, then leading the Justice Department, came under immense criticism for what they did whenever they got to the Justice Department,” CNN Crime and Justice Correspondent Katelyn Polantz told CNN anchor Brianna Keilar. “Todd Blanche had been the Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove is now a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals — he's Senate-confirmed for life there. Blanche, now as the Attorney General, it's possible he will have cases before Bove. It's not that unusual for judges to be swearing in people, but it is unusual to have two personal lawyers to Donald Trump there now in the Oval as Todd Blanche becomes the Attorney General.”

She added that it is also unusual for a new attorney general to receive as much institutional criticism as Blanche has received. She quoted Stacey Young, the executive director of Justice Connection, an organization that represents a number of former career officials at the Justice Department.

“[Young] says, ‘As [deputy attorney general], Blanche used that time to shred DOJ's institutional norms, destroy important offices, re-victimize sex crime survivors’ — that would be Epstein victims — ‘eviscerate accountability for January 6th, and attack the career workforce,’” Polantz quoted Young. “Nearly 20,000 career employees have left the department, many of whom were fired or forced out for doing their jobs. This is a generational loss of institutional knowledge and expertise that will be impossible to replace at the Department of Justice.”

She added, “Now, today is the day that Blanche will formally come into office as Attorney General, who'd be clapped in by the people in that office, including many of these career employees who have seen their colleagues fired really just for doing their jobs, for being assigned to certain cases that this administration has wanted to remove them over. It really is a spectacular turn of events for Todd Blanche — being the defense attorney attacking the Justice Department, now leading it as Attorney General.”

Now that he is confirmed, Blanche’s work will be cut out for him as he implements Trump’s agenda while steering clear of his own legal problems.

“As Blanche assumes his new role, now with the imprimatur of Senate backing, walking a tightrope between satisfying Trump and fulfilling an attorney general’s obligations to the rule of law is likely to only grow more perilous,” The Washington Post's Jeremy Roebuck wrote on Sunday. “Over the next several months, the Justice Department is expected to make a number of charging decisions in sensitive cases of keen interest to the president.”

Roebuck continued that “prosecutors in Florida have been at work for months on what Trump allies have referred to as a ‘grand conspiracy’ investigation of former Obama- and Biden-era officials, including former CIA director John Brennan, who they say engaged in a long-running scheme to violate the president’s civil rights through efforts to undermine his presidency — allegations Brennan denies.”

The journalist concluded, “Meanwhile, department investigators continue to seek evidence to back Trump’s unproven assertions that the 2020 election was stolen, that there exist broad left-wing conspiracies to oppose his second-term agenda and that his critics, including former FBI director James B. Comey, deserve to be put in prison.”