It’s been about a month since Karoline Leavitt wrapped up her tenure as Donald Trump’s fifth White House press secretary, and the president has not yet chosen her successor. That said, last week he pitched a curious idea as a temporary solution while the process to fill the vacancy continues.
As Trump prepared to leave Ireland over the weekend, he said, in response to a question about his next press secretary, “We’re going to use the secretaries” — as in the White House Cabinet secretaries. He specifically referred to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as the kind of people the press corps should expect to see fielding questions during upcoming briefings.
Two days later, Attorney General Todd Blanche took some time away from his duties at the Justice Department to speak on behalf of the White House during a 33-minute press briefing.
Over the course of the briefing, the nation’s chief law enforcement official covered plenty of ground, but just as important as what Blanche said was that he had agreed to host a White House press briefing in the first place.
In the post-Watergate era, both parties embraced a model in which the Justice Department maintained a degree of independence from the White House. Seeing the attorney general literally playing the role of the president’s spokesperson, after having placed a giant Trump banner on the facade of Main Justice, was a timely reminder that the wall between Trump and federal law enforcement has fared about as well as the walls of the East Wing.
The briefing came less than a week after Blanche became the first sitting attorney general to deliver partisan remarks during a major political party’s convention.
Blanche isn’t just politicizing his office and positioning the Justice Department as an extension of the West Wing, he’s doing so in ways without precedent in the American tradition.
That said, no one should see this as too surprising. During his Senate confirmation hearing in July, Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee repeatedly tried to get Blanche to say he would operate independently of the White House and its political operation. He demurred.
“The Department of Justice, like every single department in the executive, is part of the executive,” the then-nominee said.
Soon after, during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker asked Blanche if he would commit to acting independently of the White House.
“No, I’m not going to pledge that,” he replied.
Now we know why.
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