It’s summer in Washington, DC, but members of the Senate aren’t focused on beaches, hikes, and picnics. Instead, they’re focused on President Donad Trump’s nomination of Todd Blanche to run the Justice Department as attorney general.

It’s a fight worth paying attention to, because it will affect what kind of country we live in.

Attorneys general can change our lives for the better. In the 1960s, Robert Kennedy worked tirelessly to bring civil rights to the South and to dismantle organized crime. In the 1970s, Elliot Richardson resigned rather than carry out President Richard Nixon’s illegal order to fire the special Watergate prosecutor.

Todd Blanche is about as far as you can get from either of them. How do we know? Because as deputy attorney general and acting attorney general, he’s turned the Justice Department into Trump’s personal favor factory. Instead of protecting our rights, he’s lining Trump’s pocket, protecting his personal interests, and carrying out his revenge fantasies.

He has shown how much he is willing to bend the law to line Trump’s pockets.

Blanche was the one who pushed for the $1.8 billion “weaponization” fund that would have allowed taxpayer funds to be doled out, with very little public oversight, to anyone claiming that they’d been victims of the “weaponization” of justice. It looked like a slush fund for insurrectionists and other Trump allies, including those who assaulted police officers on January 6, 2021.

Some Republican senators apparently want assurances that this scheme is dead before they vote for Blanche. But even genuine assurances don’t matter. Blanche still pushed for this corrupt money laundering operation. Giving it up under torrential pressure doesn’t show that he has good judgment and can be trusted with immense power.

The same applies for another scheme Blanche proposed at the same time as the slush fund: An agreement to end a longtime audit of Trump’s taxes (possibly saving Trump $100 million) and a gift of immunity for the........

© Common Dreams