Law and Crime reports President Donald Trump’s old defense attorney is now dipping his hand in every small-scale voting fraud case he can, potentially thumbing the scale in favor of his old boss.
“[T]he nation's top law enforcement official has personally inserted himself into small-scale voter fraud cases against four people in Nevada, according to court records,” reports Law and Crime writer Colin Kalmbacher.
October cases against four people for misdemeanor count of voting by alien all have an “unexpected” name atop the signature block of the charging document: Attorney General Todd Blanche, the president's former personal attorney. To be sure, Blanche’s people charged all four misdemeanor cases by criminal information — meaning defendants have not been indicted by a grand jury. But Kalmbacher says the act of plugging the name of DOJ top brass to low-level crimes is “unusual,” and a U.S. attorney general appearing on such a document is “rarer still.”
"The Attorney General himself signing a criminal information is extremely rare if it has even ever been done before," former federal prosecutor and Westchester district attorney Mimi Rocah said. "It raises huge red flags about why he is doing so in any particular case."
A Law and Crime sample of filings by federal prosecutors in Nevada in October reveals Blanche attached his name to cases that “run the gamut from coercion allegations (charged by information) to a bank robbery sentencing disagreement (charged by a complaint). And while the high-profile nature of the voting fraud cases may explain Blanche's personal investment, Kalmbacher reports there may be “another factor” influencing procedure.
“In a recurring controversy during the second Trump administration, the White House has given up on Senate confirmation for such positions, opting for a series of lesser appointments provided by various statutes,” said Kalmbacher. “First assistant U.S. attorney and special attorney Sigal Chattah currently runs the Nevada office — after a court found she was unlawfully appointed to the U.S. attorney role.
In Trumpland, cases filed without confirmed AGs at the helm often get tossed from courts. And sometimes entire cases have also been thrown out, giving defense attorneys the chance to dismantle all the cases in which since-disqualified Trump appointees signed as prosecutors.
But Nevada might also be a special case because it’s been an especially hard nut for the Trump DOJ to crack.
“The loudly announced voter fraud prosecutions come on the heels of a recent embarrassment for the Trump administration,” reports Law and Crime. “Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security claimed there were some 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada's voter rolls. Over the summer, those claims were walked back to just 185 such alleged noncitizens, until Nevada authorities determined that every one of them was actually a citizen.”
But ever since Blanche failed to protect Trump from conviction in his hush-money case involving payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, critics say he has been wrangling documents for Trump as head of the DOJ.
Interim attorney general Todd Blanche has “aggressively moved to deploy the department’s resources to please [president] Donald Trump,” reports the Guardian, “leaving little doubt about how the president’s former personal attorney would further politicize the department if his status atop US law enforcement becomes permanent.”
