During Sunday’s broadcast of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Attorney General Todd Blanche rejected calls from the left-wing media to say that the Department of Justice operated independently of the White House’s executive functions.
“As we just heard in your address to the Justice Department staff this week, you said you and DOJ will, quote, ‘uphold the law without fear or favor,'” “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker said. “You, of course, used to be President Trump’s former personal defense attorney. Can you pledge that the Justice Department will always act independently of the White House?”
Blanche replied, “Well, there’s a big difference between saying we will always do our job and investigate any case and act independently of the White House. No, I’m not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that. The president — I mean, if I were to pledge, I will be independent of the White House, what that means is that if President Trump says, ‘I want the Department of Justice to go after every violent criminal in this country,’ which is what he has said, what you’re saying to me is I should say, “No, sir, not going to do it.” So, I will act with integrity.”
“Our prosecutors will act with integrity,” he continued. “We will prosecute without fear or any sort of favor. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, and that’s what every Department of Justice should do.”
Welker interjected, “Well, I guess big picture, if the president asks you to do something that you feel crosses an ethical or legal line, would you do it?”
Blanche said, “The president will never ask me to do something unethical or illegal. He never has. He never will. And no, I swore to the Constitution of the United States, like every cabinet secretary has done and like every attorney general before me has done. And so, this narrative that’s mostly pushed by the left and pushed by the media, that the president’s going to pull me aside and ask me to do something illegal is completely a false narrative, not true, will not happen, and hasn’t happened.”
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