Two Trump Lawyers Walk Into the Oval Office and Nobody’s Allowed to Watch
Funny how the doors close when the important stuff happens.
On Monday, Todd Blanche got sworn in as Attorney General of the United States. The ceremony took place in the Oval Office. The man who administered the oath was Judge Emil Bove, who until recently was Blanche’s top deputy at the Justice Department. Before that, Bove was acting deputy attorney general. Before that, he was Blanche’s law partner. Before that, they sat side by side at the defense table for Donald Trump’s criminal trials.
No press was allowed in. Let that sink in for a second. The nation’s top law enforcement officer takes his oath, and the American public is not permitted to witness it. Blanche’s wife, daughter, and granddaughter were there. FBI Director Kash Patel was there. Stephen Miller was there. But the press? Locked out. Ask yourself who benefits from that arrangement.
Here is the part the establishment media will tell you is perfectly normal. Bove and Blanche were Trump’s personal defense lawyers. Then Trump made Bove the acting deputy attorney general. Then Trump made Blanche the attorney general, confirmed 50-49 in the Senate at some point in the early morning hours of a Saturday, when nobody was watching. Then Trump made Bove a federal appeals court judge on the Third Circuit. Two lawyers who worked for one man now run the Justice Department and sit on a federal bench, and the man who put them there is the same man they were paid to defend.
At DOJ, CNN reports Bove “quickly earned a reputation as Trump’s hatchet man.” He led mass firings of career prosecutors. He personally axed several prosecutors in New York and Washington who refused to sign court documents dropping corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned over it. She alleged in her resignation letter that Adams’s lawyers had proposed a quid pro quo: Adams enforces Trump’s immigration policies, and his case goes away. The Department of Justice, she wrote, went along with it.
Whistleblowers have alleged that Bove suggested ignoring federal court orders in a case involving deportations to El Salvador. His confirmation hearings for the appeals court were, by CNN’s own description, “rife with allegations” from Democratic senators that he pressured prosecutors to advance the president’s personal agenda and pushed to disregard judges’ rulings.
Abbie Rowe (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsAnd now this same judge is swearing in this same attorney general, behind closed doors, in the president’s office, with Stephen Miller smiling in the background.
Blanche has overseen large-scale firings of experienced prosecutors. He has advanced legal arguments expanding presidential authority. Judges across the country have openly questioned the Justice Department’s decisions under his watch. He was confirmed by a single vote. Two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, broke ranks. Every Democrat voted no.
Now step back and look at the whole picture. A president hires two lawyers. He installs one as attorney general and the other as his deputy, then elevates the deputy to a lifetime seat on the federal bench. The attorney general reshapes the Justice Department to serve the president’s agenda. The deputy, now a judge, swears him in with no cameras present. The FBI director and the White House deputy chief of staff stand by as witnesses.
If you scripted this for a movie, the studio would reject it for being too on the nose.
But this is not a movie. This is your government. And the people running it made sure you did not get to see the part that mattered.