President Donald Trump's Justice Department suffered a humiliation on Thursday as prosecutors were forced to withdraw subpoenas against New York Times reporters.
But buried in the brawl with a federal judge in D.C. over the matter was an exchange that had ominous implications for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, legal expert Lisa Rubin told MS NOW's Katy Tur.
For starters, said Rubin, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian "told them that there are federal regulations that demand that where the Department of Justice subpoenas either the news media or a third party for information relating to a member of the news media, they have to take all reasonable steps to obtain that information from another source." Only for prosecutor Sean Buckley to admit that hadn't happened.
Ultimately, said Rubin, the judge gave Buckley a choice: "You either withdraw these subpoenas or I will quash them. At that point, Sean Buckley asked for an adjournment of the hearing" and ducked away to make a call before allowing the subpoenas to be withdrawn.
But this isn't where the revelations end, said Rubin.
"The other thingthat I think is important forour viewers to know is thatsubpoenas like this, byregulation, have to beauthorized by the AttorneyGeneral of the United States.And indeed, Judge Subramanian [got] an admission from Mr.Buckley" that Todd Blanche personally signed off on the whole thing.
That, she added, "was astunning admission, given theongoing debate about whether Todd Blanche is going to get confirmed. And as you and Ihave discussed on air, thereare still two votes very much hanging in the balance withrespect to Mr. Blanche's nomination."