DOJ News: Blanche Says No Criminal Probes of Democrats
The doj news out of Washington on Thursday was a rare moment of de-escalation. Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters that the Justice Department has no active criminal investigations into Democratic lawmakers over their remarks about the investigations they plan to open once they take control of Congress in January. The statement came four days after Blanche had refused to rule out such prosecutions on television, and three days after President Donald Trump publicly ordered the department to investigate Democrats he accused of extortion. It did not settle the dispute: the same day, Trump renewed his demand that six Democratic lawmakers be prosecuted.
The episode captures the strange position the Justice Department now occupies in the Trump administration: the agency the president has repeatedly asked to pursue his political opponents, and the agency that will face aggressive congressional oversight when the new Congress convenes on January 3. Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, has spent the week defending the president’s right to demand investigations of his critics while insisting the department will not punish lawmakers for their words.
What Blanche Said on Thursday
Blanche spoke after a Justice Department press conference announcing Operation TorNado, an international crackdown on dark web drug trafficking that produced 354 arrests worldwide, including 132 in the United States. Authorities also seized five metric tons of drugs and more than 210 million euros in criminal assets. It was there that Blanche was asked about the political fight dominating Washington.
“There’s no ongoing investigations, criminal investigations into words that that incoming senators or congressmen have said,” Blanche told reporters. Asked what a Democrat had said that crossed a criminal line, he replied, “I’d never said that that point has been crossed.” He added, “That is not a crime to say that,” and, “Nobody’s saying that’s a crime.” The remarks retreated from the position he had taken on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, when he said “there could be” a crime to investigate if Democrats’ rhetoric turned threatening, and told the incoming Oversight Committee, “I would be very worried if I was a member on that committee.”
The shift matters because of what Blanche had left open on Sunday. He had refused to rule out prosecutions and confirmed he planned to represent Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth if he faced impeachment charges. The impeachment news earlier in the week pointed the same way: on Tuesday, the House voted 211 to 204 to refer an impeachment resolution against Hegseth to the Judiciary Committee, effectively killing the effort for now. Blanche’s Thursday remarks narrowed the question: the words lawmakers have used so far do not, on their own, amount to a crime — though he added that political speech can cross a legal line if it becomes a threat.
Trump Renews the Call to Prosecute the “Seditious Six”
Hours before Blanche spoke, Trump had renewed his demand. In a post on Thursday, Trump again called for six Democratic lawmakers to be prosecuted over a video they recorded, calling the group the “Seditious Six” and asking, “Will the Seditious Six ever be prosecuted?” The video, posted last year, showed six Democrats telling members of the military and intelligence communities not to obey unlawful orders. The administration sought to indict the lawmakers earlier this year, but a federal grand jury in Washington unanimously declined.
In the trump news cycle this week, the failed indictment has become a central fact. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, tried to secure charges against the six legislators, arguing they had committed federal felonies by producing the video. The grand jury’s refusal was unanimous, and Democrats now cite it as evidence that the department has already tested the limits of prosecuting lawmakers for their speech.
The focus on the six lawmakers is part of a wider pattern. Last week Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, saying remarks she had made at a school amounted to a “criminal act.” On Saturday he called Democrats who plan to investigate executive branch officials “EXTORTIONISTS” worthy of “imprisonment.” The demands have put Blanche in a difficult position: the president is his boss, but the department’s grand jury has already declined to treat the lawmakers’ speech as a crime.
The Texas Prosecutor’s Letter to Senator Blumenthal
While Blanche was clarifying the department’s position in Washington, a separate confrontation was unfolding in Texas. On Wednesday, Aaron Reitz, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, directed Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut to preserve records from his inquiry into donors to the White House ballroom. Reitz accused Blumenthal of threatening “citizens for associating themselves with the President and other public officials” and warned of “significant legal consequences” if the senator failed to comply. The letter cited federal statutes on conspiracy against rights and deprivation of rights under color of law.
Blumenthal is the top Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and his inquiry into the ballroom donors is one the administration has singled out. Last month he wrote to people identified by the Washington Post as donors to the project. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, before Reitz sent his letter, Blumenthal said his inquiries would extend to “the corporations and individuals who have donated to his vanity project,” and argued that those donors had “no executive privilege whatsoever.”
Blumenthal answered Reitz on Wednesday with defiance. He said he “will not be intimidated” and sent Reitz a preservation demand of his own, asking him to retain his communications about the letter. Blanche was asked on Thursday whether the department’s headquarters had approved the letter. He said “any office could investigate that” and that department leaders work with U.S. attorneys, including Reitz, “on ongoing investigations.” He did not say whether headquarters had approved it. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter had already written on X, “The First Amendment expressly prohibits Congress from infringing the speech and association rights of Americans,” adding, “DOJ will defend against threats to those rights, period.”
The White House Warning to the Incoming Oversight Chair
The latest white house news on this front arrived on Monday, when White House counsel Will Scharf wrote to Representative Robert Garcia of California, the Democrat in line to chair the House Oversight Committee in January, to tell him that the administration “will not be extorted and will not be cowed.” Scharf’s letter, first reported by Punchbowl News on Wednesday and obtained by CNN, argued that Congress must investigate “within settled constitutional limits.”
The core of the warning was a single paragraph. “Threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service, or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality,” Scharf wrote. “And issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens of their constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation.” Scharf wrote that congressional investigations “must further a legitimate legislative task.”
The warning landed eight days after voters handed Democrats control of both chambers in the midterm elections 2026, before a single subpoena had been issued. Democrats reject Scharf’s reading entirely. Garcia has said repeatedly that oversight of the executive branch is Congress’s job under the Constitution. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, immediately after Blanche, Garcia said, “They can come after us however they want. We’re not going to be intimidated,” and added, “They’re so thin skinned. We have a job to do, and we’re going to do it aggressively.”
The Epstein Report and the Democrats’ Oversight Agenda
On Tuesday, the outgoing Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Representative James Comer, released a 137-page report, the product of a 15-month investigation into the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison in 2019. The report describes a network of powerful people and institutions that enabled Epstein’s abuse for decades. The committee called in people associated with Epstein, including former President Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, and is urging the Justice Department to investigate several people Epstein’s former assistant Sarah Kellen accused of abuse.
The report says it found no documents implicating President Trump in criminal activity related to Epstein, and Comer used its release to attack the Democrats, saying, “The incessant targeting of President Trump by Committee Democrats throughout the investigation was a dishonest, politically motivated attempt to discredit and associate the President with crimes he did not commit.” In the democratic party news out of the committee on Tuesday, Garcia, who takes over from Comer in January, called the report “incomplete,” saying, “The Department of Justice continues to illegally withhold over 2.5 million pages of documents, there’s been no investigation of Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer, and Attorney General Todd Blanche has yet to testify about his role in the largest government cover-up of the modern era.”
Speaking on November 4, the day after Democrats won control of both chambers, Garcia said the first investigation of the new Congress would examine the business dealings of Trump and his family. He also listed immigration enforcement, corporate corruption, and the Epstein files. He named former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, her adviser Corey Lewandowski, and Miller among the first officials to be called. Garcia has said he wants the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner to testify. On election night he posted “LAWYER UP” on social media. Appearing on CNN on Sunday, he told host Dana Bash, “The days of us not fighting back are over.”
What Happens Next
The immediate question is what happens when the new Congress takes power in January. Garcia will hold the Oversight gavel, and Democrats will have the subpoena power they have been promising to use. The first test will be whether the administration cooperates with document requests, or resists on the constitutional grounds Scharf has set out in writing. Administration staff have reportedly been advised to retain lawyers. There is a precedent: after a smaller midterm defeat in 2018, Trump said his White House would assume a “war-like posture” toward Democratic investigations, and he was subsequently impeached in 2019 and again in 2021.
Blanche’s Thursday statement may be the most important development of the week, or a pause before the next escalation. The attorney general has now said, on the record, that the department is not investigating lawmakers for their words, and that the words themselves are not a crime. That standard will be tested the next time the president demands a prosecution. Garcia has acknowledged one limit on his own power: the Justice Department is unlikely to prosecute anyone who defies a subpoena, so the first battles could be fought in the courts. Both sides have put their positions in writing and on television, and neither shows any sign of backing down.
Source: Washington Examiner