Within a week of his confirmation, Attorney General Todd Blanche took to New York to stump for an ally of President Donald Trump’s, an act that legal expert and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance flagged Saturday as a blatant violation of U.S. law, and as something that left her “deeply disgusted."
Blanche spoke at a Trump rally Friday in support of Bruce Blakeman, a GOP gubernatorial candidate in New York hoping to defeat incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, but in doing so, came at odds with a 1939 U.S. federal law.
“A violation of the Hatch Act, if anyone believes the Attorney General should follow the law,” Vance wrote in an analysis published Saturday on her Substack, Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance.
“One of the Act’s major prohibitions is against using a federal job to influence an election. Although federal employees can, technically, campaign on their own time, the Attorney General is on the clock 24/7. Presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed officials like Blanche can only participate in partisan political activity in a purely personal (not official) capacity.”
At the rally, Blanche touted his leadership at the Justice Department – an agency he referred to as “his” – boasting about his vow to prosecute those who touch federal law enforcement officers “in any way inappropriate” to “the fullest extent of the law.”
“If only he felt that way about Jeffrey Epstein’s victims,” Vance quipped, referencing the DOJ’s failure to prosecute a single person associated with Epstein.
What Vance characterized as a blatant violation of U.S. law demonstrated, she argued, was the rules he and other Trump administration Justice Department officials operated under: “Trump rules, not the rule of law.”