As a rule, swearing-in ceremonies for attorneys general are wholly unremarkable. Indeed, looking back over the last couple of decades, the events have been effectively identical and uncontroversial: Alberto Gonzales, Michael Mukasey, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch and Merrick Garland stood in the Justice Department and took the oath of office. No muss, no fuss.
Under President Donald Trump, however, things are different.
Two days after the narrowest confirmation vote of any AG nominee in history, Blanche took the oath, not at the Justice Department he’ll lead, but in the Oval Office. The symbolism spoke volumes: The incumbent president prefers to have his attorneys general sworn in while standing in his office, offering a not-so-subtle reminder that they work for him.
The choice of location, however, was not the only point of concern. Consider, for example, who was chosen to administer the oath. The Associated Press reported:
President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, was sworn in Monday as attorney general after a bruising confirmation fight that exposed bipartisan concerns about the Justice Department’s direction under the Republican president.
Another former Trump attorney — Emil Bove, now a federal appeals court judge — administered the oath of office to Blanche at the White House following early Saturday’s Senate confirmation vote by the narrowest of margins.
Blanche and his team had plenty of choices for the ceremony. For reasons that went unexplained and unremarked upon, Trump’s former defense lawyer was sworn in by a different former Trump defense lawyer.
Let’s also not forget that Bove is more than just a former member of the president’s legal team; he was also one of the most controversial judicial nominees in recent memory, whose nomination was opposed by several dozen former judges and more than 900 former Justice Department lawyers.
Gregg Nunziata, the executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law and a former general counsel to then-Sen. Marco Rubio, explained after the Oval Office event, “Choosing Bove to swear in Blanche is a deliberate middle finger to all of us who are worried that the Department has become a tool of the president’s wrath rather than a servant of justice. They don’t want to prove us wrong by being better than we think they are; they are who we think they are.”
We’ve seen Team Trump spike the football before, but this was just insulting.
What’s more, the offensive display also offered a timely reminder of the president’s unnerving habit of rewarding lawyers who worked for him directly with powerful governmental positions. Bove and Blanche are merely two of the most striking examples, but they’re part of a sizable club.
My MS NOW colleague Lisa Rubin similarly explained as this week got underway that Trump is elevating Will Scharf, the current White House staff secretary, to serving as White House counsel, which means that the U.S. government’s top three lawyers all served as personal attorneys to the president.
They have plenty of company.
- Pam Bondi was part of a Trump legal defense team, and she became attorney general.
- Blanche was one of Trump’s criminal defense attorneys, and he succeeded Bondi as attorney general.
- Bove represented Trump before being tapped to serve as the principal associate deputy attorney general, and he’s now a federal appeals court judge.
- John Sauer was also a Trump lawyer, and the president tapped him to serve as the solicitor general.
- Alina Habba was also a member of Trump’s legal team, and he tapped her to serve as an interim U.S. attorney. (Her appointment was later deemed unlawful, but that doesn’t negate the underlying point.)
- Lindsey Halligan, another former member of Trump’s legal team, was also tapped to serve as an interim U.S. attorney. (Like Habba, her appointment also later collapsed.)
- Harmeet Dhillon served as a legal adviser to Trump’s 2020 campaign, and she’s now serving as the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
- James M. McDonald was also a Trump lawyer, and now he’s a federal prosecutor.
- Justin Smith was also a Trump lawyer, and now he’s a federal appeals court judge.
- Matthew Schwartz was also a member of Trump’s litigation team, and now he’s also federal appeals court judge.
When Trump has an important personnel decision to make, he too often looks to people he knows personally, as if he were the head of a social club and its members were entitled to certain perks — such as powerful federal positions in a global superpower.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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