Todd Blanche’s own words came back to haunt him after the Justice Department targeted a group of judges in a blue state.
Blanche, 52, accused federal judges in Minnesota of breaching judicial ethics by speaking out against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in a press interview—but the attorney general himself declared a “war” against “activist judges” last year.
The Justice Department filed a judicial misconduct complaint against seven Minnesota judges, including Patrick Schiltz, for speaking to The New York Times about the bloody immigration blitz last winter. Schiltz, who served as chief of Minnesota’s Federal District Court at the time, warned that the administration’s actions were “a grave threat to the rule of law.”
Blanche claimed in a statement that the judges “undermined public confidence in an impartial judiciary in Minnesota” by speaking to the press about ongoing cases.
During a press conference on Wednesday, however, a reporter pointed out that the judges’ comments weren’t much different from remarks Blanche made last year at a Federalist Society event with judges and lawyers.
“Can you just explain—because I think it’s sometimes hard for non-lawyers to follow—the distinction you’re drawing between your own comments about the judiciary—you’ve said ‘It’s a war, man,’ and you’ve asked young lawyers to join in that war—and what you find at fault with what the judges are saying in broad terms about the administration,” a reporter asked Blanche.
“Well, um, there’s, there could not be a bigger difference,” Blanche shot back. “It turns out I’m not a judge. It turns out I’m not bound by the judicial canons. OK? I’m allowed to fight for my prosecutors. I’m allowed to get really fired up when, for example, judges in Minnesota complained about us violating court orders.”
In November last year, Blanche appealed to “hungry and thirsty” young lawyers to join the “war” against what the administration has dubbed as “activist judges.”
“It’s a war, man,” Blanche, then-deputy attorney general, said. “It’s happening over and over and over again.”
“We need you, because it is a war, and it’s something we will not win unless we keep on fighting,” he continued. “It’s hard to get the media, it’s hard to get the American people to focus on what a travesty it is when you have an individual judge be able to stop an entire operation or an entire administrative policy that’s constitutional and allowed just because he or she chooses to do so. So, it’s a war.”
Blanche doubled down on those remarks on Wednesday as he cried foul about judges who “still do whatever they’re gonna do” despite knowing their decisions would get reversed by the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court, forcing prosecutors to work “16 to 20 hours a day, seven days a week” thanks to a flood of cases.
“The ‘It’s a war.’ I mean, listen, that was a comment that I made in the middle of a seven-sentence paragraph,” he said. “And what I meant is exactly what I’m talking about.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
