Ankush Khardori writes:

“Todd Blanche is a STAR,” President Trump declared defiantly on social media on Thursday as he sought to clear resistance from two Senate Republicans to his nominee for attorney general. Instead of quickly acceding to the senators’ modest requests — for written guarantees confirming the elimination of a slush fund for Jan. 6 rioters and the limiting of a tax immunity deal for Mr. Trump — the president raised withdrawing Mr. Blanche’s nomination until next year, after they leave office, as a way to sidestep their opposition.

The episode made the case against confirming Mr. Blanche even stronger, highlighting the chaos and incompetence that has marked his time at the Justice Department and providing a timely reminder of what he would bring to the job.

Many others have pointed out that Mr. Blanche has targeted Mr. Trump’s political adversaries with bogus criminal cases and overseen an exodus of some of the Justice Department’s most experienced lawyers.

Less noted but as important: He is also embarrassingly bad at lawyering.

The quality of the department’s work has sharply deteriorated under his leadership, in high-profile cases and in routine, low-level matters. The result has been a crisis of confidence that is draining the Justice Department’s legitimacy with the courts and the public — a crisis that Mr. Trump deepened on Thursday with his latest ploy to get his attorney general nominee confirmed, no questions asked.

During Mr. Blanche’s tenure as deputy to Attorney General Pam Bondi and as acting attorney general following her departure from office in April, federal judges across the country have in effect accused department attorneys of squandering the trust and credibility their predecessors had built up over decades. Justice Department lawyers have had to correct factual misrepresentations they made to judges, apologize for failing to meet deadlines and retract their own legal positions. Last week, a judge forced federal prosecutors to withdraw subpoenas issued to four New York Times journalists after finding that they had made serious errors. [Continue reading…]