The Justice Department (adapted from image via Quintin Soloviev)

IN THIS EDITION
•Two Bad Arguments Carried Blanche Over the Finish Line
•Charging Decision: The case against Anthony Fauci
•Exhibit A: More bad publicity for a Big Law firm
•The Docket: A roundup with notes on major legal stories
•Off the Record: Some non-legal items that caught my eye
 
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy’s decision today to support acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s bid for the permanent position appears to have clinched it for Blanche. 
In the end, Senate Republicans caved, as they have on nearly all of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees. In this case, they have now effectively endorsed the abuses at the Justice Department to date and enabled more to come. 
In his speech, Cassidy invoked two lines of argument that have been used by Republicans to support Blanche’s nomination. One of them relies on a misrepresentation of public data. The other relies on a misunderstanding — a willful misunderstanding, evidently — of the Senate’s role in providing advice and consent on presidential appointments. 
1. The Drop in Crime Does Not Support Blanche’s Nomination
Cassidy argued that a vote against Blanche would put “at risk the progress made fighting violent crime, human and drug trafficking and fraud.” This echoed a claim made earlier in the week by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who pointed, in particular, to a recent report released by the Council on Criminal Justice documenting broad declines in crime and credited Blanche and the Trump DOJ for this trend.
The report, however, does not support Republicans’ characterization of it.
After Grassley’s remarks, the CCJ published a social media thread addressing the report’s actual conclusions. The group explained that it is in the process of evaluating other factors for the decline that it documented — criminal justice strategies, technology, and broader “shifts in society & culture” — but the group most certainly does not credit the Trump DOJ for it.
None of this should have come as a surprise. The group’s report didn’t support Grassley’s characterization of it, the accompanying press release didn’t, and the group’s President & CEO, Adam Gelb, wrote an op-ed in USA Today in February that rejected this interpretation of the CCJ’s work after Trump credited his administration for the drop in crime at his State of the Union address.
The fact that Republicans were forced to invoke such a flimsy and misleading argument to support Blanche is an embarrassment in its own right. 
2. The Senate Is Not a Helpless Bystander
Cassidy also argued that Blanche was better than any realistic alternative. The choice, he said, “is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche. It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche.”
This argument makes no sense coming from a U.S. senator, even though plenty of political reporters and legal commentators fell for it. The reason is that the alternative was not, in fact, “another acting attorney general.”
When the president puts forward a nominee who is unfit or unqualified, the job of the Senate is to reject that nominee. The president is then supposed to work with the Senate to find a suitable nominee who can get their support. In the meantime, the president is embarrassed, the nominee is embarrassed, and they are incentivized to move quickly for that reason.
What we have now — courtesy of Cassidy and other Republican senators — is a nonsensical standard that effectively writes them out of their own constitutional role.
 
Charging Decision
 
What to make of a criminal case
Yesterday, Republicans on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs voted to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to questions during a hearing last week. The committee referred its finding to the Justice Department.
The case is probably not going very far. Here’s how I think about it:
1.Republicans have claimed that Fauci should have answered their questions because former President Joe Biden pardoned him on his way out of office, and therefore he has no criminal exposure concerning his conduct during the pandemic. The pardon, however, does not prevent state or local law enforcement authorities from pursuing Fauci, and indeed, three Republican state attorneys general are already investigating Fauci.
2.Under ordinary circumstances, the Justice Department would not act on a criminal referral like this. Unlike Steve Bannon, for instance, Fauci actually showed up and engaged with the committee.
3.These are not ordinary circumstances. The Trump Justice Department is more than willing to pursue criminal cases against the president’s perceived political adversaries, even when they are very silly. It would not be surprising at all if the department tries to prosecute Fauci over this. 
4.It’s practically inconceivable that Fauci will ever be convicted. The case would have to be brought in Washington, D.C., since that is where the alleged contempt occurred, but it’s far from clear that prosecutors will even be able to convince grand jurors to charge the case. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s team could not even get a single grand juror to sign off on the proposed case against six Democratic lawmakers who made a video advising members of the military to ignore illegal orders, and Pirro’s office embarrassed itself further last week after it was forced to withdraw criminal charges that sought to blame a private citizen for the president’s botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.
5.Even if a grand jury returns an indictment, prosecutors would have to persuade a jury in Washington to unanimously vote to convict Fauci. Under the circumstances, that is very hard to see happening.
 
Exhibit A
 
One document, closely examined
This week, a nonprofit advocacy group filed a complaint with the First Judicial Department’s Attorney Grievance Committee for the State of New York concerning the conduct of Brad Karp, the former chairman of Paul, Weiss, who was the first to enter into a deal with the Trump White House last year to avoid punitive sanctions. 
The complaint came from the Legal Accountability Center’s Michael Teter, whose work in this general area I covered back in 2023. The filing focuses on Karp’s alleged efforts to mislead the public about his and the firm’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, as well as the deal with the White House — which, in addition to all of the other ethical problems, may have been a federal crime. 
The practical implications of the complaint are one thing — Karp’s career was already nearing its conclusion, and he is already extremely wealthy — but the episode is embarrassing nonetheless for both Karp and the firm, particularly coming on the heels of a lengthy New York Times investigation published last weekend about the origins of the deal.
I contacted Karp about the complaint and the potential criminal implications of the deal he struck, and I spoke with him briefly by phone. He declined to comment on the record.
 
The Docket
 
A roundup of key stories on national legal affairs
•25 states sue over Trump’s new tariffs, calling them ‘pretext’ to replace his old ones (AP): I wrote about the prospects of success for this sort of legal challenge here.
•Trump vowed to ‘bring free speech back.’ Judges in 75 cases ruled that he has stifled it (Reuters): Another excellent investigation from the folks at Reuters.
•States Warn Supreme Court That Trump’s Mail-In Voting Order Would Create Chaos (NOTUS): “President Donald Trump continues to push last-ditch efforts to oversee elections and message to voters that noncitizen voting is rampant, despite reports that it occurs rarely.”
•Pirro Gave Up on Other Reflecting Pool Prosecutions, Too (Washingtonian): The U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. dropped three other cases against people who the government claimed had damaged the reflecting pool.
•Jack Smith invited to testify before Senate Judiciary Committee next month (The Hill): Smith agreed to the request, subject to approval by the Justice Department.
•Using a Gun to Defend Yourself? The Right to Kill Is Growing. (NYT): “People do not merely own more guns in America. They now have more ways to justify using one to kill another person, simply by invoking an often inchoate sense of fear. This marks a new era of defensible homicides.”
 
Off the Record
 
Some non-legal items that caught my eye
•One photo changed ‘Odyssey’ actress Samantha Morton’s life (WP)
•This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature (NYT)
•Washington, D.C., Is America’s Newest Billionaire Boomtown (WSJ)
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