To Sir With Love

Those schoolgirl days of telling tales and biting nails are gone But in my mind I know they will still live on and on But how do you thank someone who has taken you from crayons to perfume?

Every mafia boss keeps one guy close. Not the smartest man in the room. Not the strategist. The one who will do whatever needs doing. He wants to be useful so badly that he mistakes obedience for competence.

Todd Blanche is that guy. He’s Trump’s Christopher Moltisanti.

The newly confirmed Attorney General spent Sunday morning on national television explaining how independent he is from the White House. He demonstrated the opposite. This will be his undoing.

Kristen Welker asked him on Meet the Press for the easiest assurance an attorney general can give: that he would operate independently of the president.

Blanche wouldn’t make that promise.

His explanation was that no attorney general should ever pledge independence from the president. He presented it as principle. The effect was to explain, at length, why he could not give the one assurance that would have made him look independent.

Then he went further.

“There is this extraordinarily false narrative,” Blanche said, meaning the idea that Trump calls him up and orders him to prosecute particular people.

According to Blanche, that isn’t how it works. Trump doesn’t wake up and say, “Todd, go prosecute X or Y.” He has never done that. He will never do that.

The problem with three emphatic denials is that people tend to remember the record. Again, his undoing.

In September, Trump publicly demanded the prosecution of a list of political enemies, including the predecessor Blanche replaced. Whatever Blanche wants the public to believe, the president has already made his wishes clear.

The pattern runs through everything he says. He defends the independence of the Justice Department while explaining why the president is entitled to be furious at the people who work there.

Take Jeanine Pirro, the red-wined U.S. Attorney in Washington.

Pirro dropped a vandalism case involving the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and blamed problems with the renovation. Trump, who has known Pirro for years (FYI, her back story, the real one, I’ve got to tell soon), reacted angrily and wondered publicly whether she should be fired.

Blanche’s response was an exercise in Mormon marriage, or in the art of having it both ways.

He said he fully supported Pirro, “as does President Trump.” Then he acknowledged that Trump was “extraordinarily frustrated” and said he did not “in any way fault him” for being angry. He also reminded viewers that the department was still investigating.

It was less a position than an attempt to hold two at once.

Then came the most revealing moment.

On Friday, on Long Island, Blanche stood beside Trump and Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County Executive (who, yes, started his own militia against transgender athletes) and Republican candidate for governor, and declared that anyone who lays an inappropriate hand on a federal law enforcement officer would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

That sounds tough. Not really. Sounds more S.E. Hinton: “That Was Then, This Is Now.”

Let’s not forget Trump’s first day in office the second time began by granting sweeping clemency to people convicted of crimes against federal officers during the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Asked to reconcile the two, Blanche fell back on the obvious answer: the president has the constitutional authority to pardon.

Of course he does. But that is not the answer to the question. But it raises an issue for Blanche, and that is just what his promises are worth. He says the law will reach anyone who lays a hand on a federal officer. The president has already decided that some of them walk free.

Then there is the $1.776 billion settlement fund that nearly derailed Blanche’s confirmation.

Blanche helped put together the fund to compensate people who claimed they had been victimized by the previous administration. He also arranged broad protections from tax scrutiny involving Trump, his sons and their businesses. Imagine that. Immunity to Donny Boy and Lil’ Eric. Sounds kind of westward in terms of settlements and justice. Though I’m touched by the rare sight of paternalism. More likely the boys had some sort of “tape” on Fat Daddy.

When the confirmation fight became difficult, Blanche put his retreat in writing.

On Sunday, he said the fund was dead.

Then he added that people who believe they are owed compensation (including Capitol rioters who were convicted and later pardoned) could still pursue their claims in court.

So the fund is dead. But the claims aren’t.

Even when Blanche shuts a door, he leaves it cracked open. And to think, when he proclaimed his love to Trump, many of us thought it was just plain ol’ sycophantry. Turns out it was real live pederasty or something pretty much like it.

Embarrassment is survivable. His past is not.

People are already keeping track.

In July, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams called the IRS settlement self-dealing undertaken for an improper purpose and referred Blanche to the state bars of New York and Washington.

The judge said she was “extremely troubled” by Blanche’s testimony before Congress in May and described his account of the deal as “at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.”

There is also the plain conflict: Blanche went directly from representing Donald Trump as his personal defense lawyer to becoming the country’s top federal law-enforcement official.

That is not a small transition.

The bar referral did not come out of nowhere. Blanche already faces an ethics complaint before the New York State Bar, backed by more than 100 former federal and state judges.

There is a history here, too, and Blanche knows it.

Michael Cohen was Trump’s fixer. He was disbarred in New York after pleading guilty to federal crimes.

Rudy Giuliani was once America’s Mayor, never mine. He’s a bigot. He was later disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C., over false statements he made while trying to keep Trump in office.

John Eastman, who helped develop the strategy for having the vice president interfere with the electoral count, was disbarred in California. He should be committed everywhere else.

Kenneth Chesebro, one of the architects of the fake-elector scheme, was disbarred in New York. His polished exterior was not heavy enough to hide his greed, nor his past.

Jenna Ellis was suspended from practicing law in Colorado for three years, giving Coloradans a breather, but she’ll be back.

Lin Wood surrendered his law license rather than face disciplinary proceedings. I think it was cheaper.

Jeffrey Clark has been recommended for disbarment in Washington and is still waiting for the final outcome.

They all had a job to do. Which was to do the right thing. They all believed they were doing it for their client. And one by one, they discovered that being useful to Donald Trump was not a defense against the consequences of being useful to Donald Trump.

That may be the lesson Blanche is missing.

The person at the top has the power to pardon. The people carrying out the orders have the exposure.

And the lawyer who believes he can protect himself by being the most loyal man in the room may discover that loyalty is not a legal defense.

Blanche said Trump will never call him and tell him to prosecute someone. We all know that is not true.

The black-eyed Blanche will land where they all do. Disbarred. Maybe in prison. Could be worse. Look at Pam Bondi, a joke of a lawyer from traffic court to The People’s Court. And we still don’t know where she’s landing.

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