Sunday, June 07, 2026

Blanche believes he has the right to determine what laws to follow and which ones to ignore

David McAfee (RAW STORY) reports: 

President Donald Trump's decision to abandon his $1.8 billion IRS settlement didn't defuse the legal crisis surrounding it — it just shifted the target, according to a federal trial attorney who has been tracking the case.

Sabrina Haake, a 25-year federal litigator and political analyst who writes the Substack newsletter The Haake Take, argues that Trump dropped the so-called anti-weaponization fund not because of political pressure ahead of the midterms, but to avoid forcing the appointment of a third attorney general. The real threat, she writes, came from an extraordinary intervention by 35 retired federal judges.

On May 27, those judges — spanning both parties — filed a motion to reopen Trump's IRS case on suspicion of fraud against the court. Their motion accused the Department of Justice of deceiving U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams by announcing a settlement publicly without notifying the court, then using that settlement as legal justification for transferring $1.776 billion in taxpayer money to Trump, his family, and his businesses while purporting to release all federal claims against them.

The judges called it "most egregious conduct involving a corruption of the judicial process itself," writing that the parties "used the proceedings before this Court as a legal pretext" while working to prevent the court from determining whether a legitimate case even existed. If Trump controlled both sides of the same case and personally profited from the outcome, the judges reasoned, there was no legal controversy — only theft.


Todd Blanche, the idiot who doesn't understand the law.  The idiot who thinks the Senate should confirm him as Attorney General.  Todd Blanche who doesn't understand the term "public servant" and instead sees his role as Deputy AG and now as AG as "public defender for Chump."  No, that's not what the Attorney General is supposed to be.  


McAfee reports that US House Rep Ted Lieu is warning Blanche:


Rep. Ted Lieu is done being subtle about Todd Blanche.

The California Democrat delivered a blunt message to the acting attorney general late on Saturday night after Blanche announced the DOJ would not be releasing the 2.5 million remaining Epstein files in its possession, saying the department had "moved on."

"Dear Todd Blanche: You don't get to decide to 'move on' from the Epstein Files or from following the congressional law," Lieu wrote. "That decision can only be made by the American people and Congress. You will be disbarred. The files will eventually be released."

Lieu added, "November is coming."

It wasn't Lieu's only shot at Blanche this weekend. The congressman also responded to a report that Blanche had said that he was putting "roadblocks" in place to make it harder for Democrats to hold Trump accountable in the future.

Lieu's response: "Dear Todd Blanche: So what illegal actions by Trump would compel you to think a future Administration would hold Trump accountable? Please do share."


Blanche doesn't apparently understand what it means when Congress passes an act and the act is signed into law by the president.  It means it's a law and that the government is compelled to obey it.  But Blanche insists that he-- not even yet made Attorney General -- can reject a law.  That he has some power not granted in the Constitution that allows him to determine which laws must be obeyed ad which he can ignore. 


 Dr. Melanie Walker.  She's someone the world is about to become more familiar with.  Joshua Chaffin and Khadeeja Safdar (WALL STREET JOURNAL) report: 


For more than a decade, Walker had worked at the Gates Foundation and then the billionaire’s private office. By the summer of 2017, the relationship between Walker and Gates had turned sexual, according to people familiar with the matter. Walker was planning her exit.

She turned to one of her closest confidants—a mentor who had supported her and advised her for nearly three decades: Jeffrey Epstein.

“With bg. All you would have to say, is you should know that I’ve told jeffrey everything – everything,” Epstein wrote in a text message. Walker replied that she was “worried he will immediately retaliate against me.”

When Gates appears before Congress this week, he will have to answer questions about such exchanges from the Justice Department’s release of Epstein files. The mysterious role played by Walker, who kept close ties with both men, will come under scrutiny for the first time.

The Seattle doctor is one of the many technicolor characters who populated Epstein’s universe. She has claimed to have been introduced to Epstein by Donald Trump in the 1990s. She struck up a close relationship with Britain’s Prince Andrew and was a longtime partner of Steven Sinofsky, a former Microsoft executive, who himself had ties to Epstein.

The Seattle doctor is one of the many technicolor characters who populated Epstein’s universe. She has claimed to have been introduced to Epstein by Donald Trump in the 1990s. She struck up a close relationship with Britain’s Prince Andrew and was a longtime partner of Steven Sinofsky, a former Microsoft executive, who himself had ties to Epstein.


Still on Epstein,  Alexander Willis (RAW STORY) notes:


The Bush administration’s Justice Department (DOJ) may have played a key role in the unprecedented and “secret” plea deal offered to Jeffrey Epstein in 2007, according to an explosive report from the Miami Herald.

The Herald’s Julie K. Brown, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose reporting helped lead to Epstein’s arrest in 2019, spoke with former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter over the course of several months, and on Saturday, had a profile on the veteran law enforcement official published in the Herald that included previously unreported details.

Reiter had initiated the first criminal probe into Epstein’s illegal conduct in the mid-2000s, later working in tandem with federal law enforcement.

However, after gathering evidence and “interviewing two dozen tearful girls and their parents” over the course of 11 months, he was then “stonewalled by state prosecutors and attacked in the media,” and later, “ostracized by federal prosecutors, who took over the case in early 2007,” the Herald’s report reads.

As parents of alleged Epstein victims grew “frustrated” with Reiter, the Palm Beach Police chief “took the unusual step” of requesting a meeting with Alexander Acosta, the Herald reported, who at the time served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and would later go on to be tapped by President Donald Trump as his Labor secretary.


Meanwhile, Ruth Igielnik (NEW YORK TIMES) reported Friday:


Much has been made about President Trump’s base — the ones who would support him even if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue. Among Republicans, the president enjoys an 82 percent approval rating, according to the latest New York Times/Siena poll, even as his overall approval ratings have reached new lows.

But there is more doubt among his base than what is generally acknowledged. In fact, one-third of the voters who approve of the president’s job performance also say they disapprove of his handling of various issues, including the economy, Iran, relations with Israel or immigration.

What could account for that discrepancy, and could this group represent a faint crack in the Republican bulwark?

In interviews with two dozen of these loyal but skeptical Trump supporters, many resent their depiction as knee-jerk MAGA voters.

[. . .]

But the loyal but skeptical supporters were also twice as likely as voters who approve of Mr. Trump on every issue to say that the country should focus on issues at home and be less involved in problems around the world, the poll found.

“I used to really like him, and I still like him, but I’m at the point where I’m nervous about things that are transpiring,” said Donna Awana, 77, a retiree living in Honolulu. “With the war in Iran and the economy, I’m just a little hesitant about him right now.”


And his Cabinet should make everyone hesitant.  Let's move over to Markwayne Mullin.  Robert Davis (RAW STORY) reports:


Markwayne Mullin may have been brought in to straighten out the Department of Homeland Security following former Secretary Kristi Noem's tenure, but a new report shows that Mullin may be more of the same, according to one legal expert. 

The Independent reported in late May that Mullin regularly uses a controversial $70 million Gulfstream jet to fly home to Oklahoma on Thursdays and doesn't return to work until Monday afternoon, meaning he works at most three days a week in Washington, D.C. The aircraft includes a queen bed, a bar, and showers, according to the report. It was one of nine jets the Trump administration approved to purchase with funds meant for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it added.

Legal expert Shant Karnikian discussed the report during a new episode of the podcast, "Civil Action," on Sunday.

"We'll see how long this lasts," Karnikian said of Mullin's tenure in the Trump administration. "This is apparently the swamp draining that Donald Trump had in mind."

Mullin was brought in to replace Noem after the former secretary publicly undercut President Donald Trump about funding for advertising campaigns featuring Noem. While Mullin told Senators during his confirmation hearing that he would help get Homeland Security back on track, some of his actions seem to suggest otherwise.

For instance, Mullin has called for ICE to return to its old training methods that were curtailed following months of violent clashes between federal agents and protesters. Mullin has also been combative with lawmakers who have questioned his leadership at the department. 

 

Still on ICE, Sophie Hurwitz (MOTHER JONES) reports:

Early Saturday morning, a woman whose husband is detained at ICE’s Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, drove nearly two hours to visit him. She was turned away at the gate. 

GEO Group—the multibillion-dollar ICE contractor that runs Delaney Hall—had cancelled family visitation for the day. She sat on a curb, cried, and drove home. Throughout the morning, I saw half-a-dozen women and children arrive: all were told they would not be seeing their loved ones that day.

More than two weeks since detainees began a hunger and labor strike inside Delaney Hall—and their allies outside answered with near-daily protests—it’s still incredibly difficult to find out what’s going on inside the facility. Often, family members find their visits rescheduled or canceled, and journalists have not made it in, either. 

Members of Congress are allowed by law to conduct unannounced oversight visits to ICE facilities like Delaney. But politicians have been turned away, too. New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver is facing assault charges after she was arrested alongside Newark mayor Ras Baraka trying to conduct an oversight visit last year. New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill tried to visit the jail in late May, and was denied. 


Meanwhile, there's Chump's war of choice.  His war on Iran that has further wrecked the American economy.  Heather Digby Parton (SALON) observes:


Leon Panetta has been in politics as long as any of us can remember. He started out as a Republican, working in the office of Sen. Thomas Kuchel, R-Calif., in the late 1960s. (Kuchel belonged to the now-vanished species of moderate Republican and actually supported both the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.) He moved up quickly to become director of the Office of Civil Rights under Richard Nixon.

In 1971, Panetta quit the Nixon administration in protest over its racist policies, switched parties and went to work for New York mayor John Lindsay, another Republican-turned-Democrat. In 1976 he was elected to Congress, where he served until 1993. He then became director of the Office of Management and Budget and White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, and for his final chapter in government served as Barack Obama‘s CIA director in the first term and defense secretary in the second. To say he’s got extensive experience would an understatement.

Panetta has always been a centrist, and I’ve been critical of his “maverick” track record over the years — he’s had a tendency to burnish his own reputation to the detriment of those he works for. But at age 87, from his perch as the head of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, it’s hard to imagine he now thinks he has anything left to prove. So when Panetta appeared on CNN to talk about the Iran war, a subject he is well qualified to discuss, and says that it’s shaping up to be “Trump’s Vietnam,” you can’t help but be a bit startled. If anyone still in public life knows how much freight that phrase carries, it would be him.

That comparison might sound hyperbolic since Vietnam was a 20-year meat-grinder of a war that cost the lives of more than 50,000 Americans and something like 3.5 million Vietnamese, both troops and civilians. But Panetta drew the comparison based on the argument that Donald Trump‘s war was an equally terrible miscalculation of the adversary’s resilience and commitment, where we’re dealing with misinformation and propaganda coming from the U.S. administration and an untrustworthy negotiating partner on the other side.

In other words, Americans have once again overestimated their own prowess and underestimated their enemy; our own government is constantly lying about the war, and the Iranians are unlikely to stick to any deal without solid verification, which is going to be difficult to manage at best. To state the obvious, the U.S. under Trump is equally untrustworthy, having torn up the hard-fought nuclear agreement negotiated under Obama, which by all accounts the Iranians had been honoring.


Today, Chump spoke with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.   Robert Davis (RAW STORY) reports: 


David Rhode, MS NOW's senior national security reporter, said on Sunday during a segment on MS NOW's "PoliticsNation" that the call shows Trump is eager for a peace deal. However, he noted that a couple of issues that have lingered since the beginning of the war seem to be prolonging the peace process. Those issues are the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global waterway for energy trade, and the continuous bombing campaigns conducted by Iran at U.S. allies in the Middle East.

"Apparently, the president and his top aides did not plan for the Strait of Hormuz to be closed," Rhode said. "Iranian missiles and drones have been able to strike ... all the countries people see on their maps there: Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE. The U.S. cannot stop Iranian drone and missile strikes against those American allies in the gulf."

"That's a massive failure by the Trump White House to not anticipate that and also not anticipate that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz," he continued. "So I think this administration needs a peace deal and needs it quickly. And the president has just not handled this war well."


Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:


ICYMI: Murray, Kaptur Asked GAO to Look Into Energy Department’s Decision to Steer Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Away from Wind, Solar in Defiance of Spending Law

Washington, D.C. — Today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that the Department of Energy’s (DOE) decision last year to steer hundreds of millions of dollars provided by Congress in fiscal year 2025 for the research and development of clean energy sources toward energy sources favored by Secretary Chris Wright violated the law.

GAO’s investigation into the matter was requested last July by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH-09), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.

In a statement responding to the decision, Senator Murray and Congresswoman Kaptur said:

“Today, GAO confirmed what’s been clear from the start: the Trump administration broke the law when it gutted investments in affordable, clean energy. Secretary Wright unilaterally rewrote a spending bill signed into law by President Trump, all so he could benefit handpicked industries at the expense of clean energy research Americans are counting on to lower their energy bills. GAO has made clear that this was not merely a policy choice—it was a clear violation of appropriations law.

“The Department of Energy cannot simply ignore the law because the Secretary has a vendetta against the most affordable energy sources. American families have paid the price for this lawbreaking—in higher energy costs, in canceled university and industry research awards, and in national lab scientists who lost their jobs. The administration must take steps to immediately comply with the law, and we must work on a bipartisan basis to insist the Department follows the law.”

In fiscal year 2024, Congress provided $137 million for DOE to support wind energy and $318 million to support solar energy. The fiscal year 2025 full-year continuing resolution—written by House Republicans and signed into law by President Trump in March 2025—continued those funding levels. However, in a spend plan made public on July 2, 2025, the Trump administration revealed it was steering hundreds of millions of dollars away from congressionally directed clean energy technologies to other, favored industries. Rather than fund wind at the enacted level of $137 million, the administration allocated just $29.8 million – a 78% cut. Rather than fund solar at the enacted level of $318 million, it allocated just $41.9 million – an 87% cut.

On July 28, 2025, Kaptur and Murray formally asked GAO to issue a legal decision on whether DOE’s FY2025 spend plan violated the Purpose Statute—which requires that appropriations be used only for the purposes for which they were provided—and the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits agencies from obligating funds in excess of available appropriations.

On February 25, 2026, as DOE began obligating funds in defiance of the law—including issuing a Notice of Funding Opportunity making $146.5 million in FY2025 funds available for geothermal energy despite Congress providing only $118 million—Kaptur and Murray renewed their GAO referral and called on the Department to immediately reverse course. Today’s GAO legal decision responds to that request.

In its decision today, GAO stated: “DOE is required to obligate and expend its FY 2025 appropriations in accordance with the referenced congressional control point amounts in the FY 2024 explanatory statement. …. To the extent that DOE obligated or expended FY 2025 funds in excess of appropriated amounts—that is the FY 2024 levels described above—DOE should report an Antideficiency Act violation.”

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