Blanche's AG Confirmation In Doubt Amid Fraud Accusations By Judge
The Narativ | Know Sooner — ⚖️ Fraud Named · 🛢️ Routes Threatened · 🚔 Stops Resume · 🕊️ Bibi Flies · 📺 2020 Reopened
👀 STORIES TO WATCH
⚖️ FRAUD NAMED
Todd Blanche sat down at 9 AM to ask the Senate for the Justice Department and spent four hours answering for it. A judge opened an inquiry Monday into whether the DOJ committed fraud on the court in Trump's suit against his own IRS — a case she found never had an opponent — and thirty-five former federal judges called the maneuver an "unprecedentedly fraudulent scheme." Blanche swore the $1.8 billion fund he personally signed is "dead"; nothing in writing kills it. The committee heard that more than 1,000 FBI personnel were pulled off casework to flag Epstein records for any mention of Trump. Ten Epstein survivors sat in the room — "I never said I would meet with survivors," Blanche told Durbin, who answered: "You are dancing on the head of a pin." Klobuchar extracted the day's one hard commitment, under oath: no armed federal agents at polling places. On Kash Patel's drunken snorkeling: "extraordinarily obnoxious." The committee sits 11–10; one Republican no ends it and watch our live coverage with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. of today’s hearing.
🛢️ ROUTES THREATENED
The blockade returned at 12:01 AM Gulf time and the strikes came with it — a fourth straight day, this wave killing at least seven Iranian troops at an army barracks. Tehran answered by threatening to halt every energy export route in the region, Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb both. Trump vowed to hit Iran's bridges and power plants "next week" if talks don't resume — hours after retreating from his own 20% strait toll. Last week 22 ships crossed a strait that carried 147 before the war.
🚔 STOPS RESUME
Trump ordered ICE back to traffic stops this morning — "important and effective" — overruling his own agency's halt after officers killed men in Maine and Texas. A third man died in St. Augustine, crushed fleeing agents. Detainees at a Texas facility reported frequent beatings the same day; the right-side press printed none of it. Mexico's criminal complaints over 17 deaths now have company.
🕊️ BIBI FLIES
Netanyahu is expected in Washington Sunday for Graham's Tuesday memorial — days after the sudden death, at 71, of the ally who had just begun to defy him: still backing a two-state solution, and going "ballistic" at Bibi's plan to end US aid.
📺 2020 REOPENED
Trump booked Thursday night, 9 PM, every network — a primetime address the White House won't put a topic to, which CNBC reports will unveil "newly declassified intelligence" that foreign nations planned to interfere in the 2020 election. He fired every election referee last week; this week he relitigates the election he lost, 110 days before the one he can't afford to. The case against 2026 gets built out of 2020 — watch this one with us.
🎯 THE BIGGER PICTURE
Everything today built toward tomorrow night. Bill Pulte — the acting intelligence chief Trump told to "declassify almost everything" — has spent two weeks pulling the documents the president needs to make Thursday's case, in between filing criminal referrals against Trump's rivals. Todd Blanche, if confirmed, delivers a Trump-friendly Justice Department to receive those referrals — and to oversee whatever criminal intimidation runs from here into the elections. Jay Clayton is the new guy at Intelligence, but his record reads company man. Across town, Bessent stamped the boss's face onto a dollar the boss's policies are sinking — the aggrandizement is the same story in miniature. Stack today's hearings against Thursday's address and the assessment is hard to avoid: this is the staffing of an operation to defraud Americans of their right to choose their government — in real time, on live television. We wait to see what the president actually does at 9 PM Thursday. But that's the heading.
🔴 LIVE TODAY ON NARATIV
ALL DAY — We're carrying the Blanche confirmation hearing live, with running clips and analysis.
3 PM ET — The Fivestack with Dean Blundell & Zev Shalev.
📚 READ THIS ON NARATIV
Judge Says Trump Used Her Courtroom to Legitimize $1.8 Billion Fund — a Day Before Blanche Faces the Senate
Todd Blanche walks into the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow needing votes from two Republicans who no longer answer to anyone. John Cornyn lost his primary. Thom Tillis is retiring. Both say they are undecided on confirming Trump’s fourth attorney general, and either can stall the nomination in a committee that sits 11–10 — Lindsey Graham’s chair empty beside them.
The judge saw it coming a day early — Monday's ruling that Trump used her courtroom to legitimize the $1.8 billion fund is the same thread Whitehouse pulled today: Judge Says Trump Used Her Courtroom to Legitimize $1.8 Billion Fund — a Day Before Blanche Faces the Senate